D&D 5E Wanting more content doesn't always equate to wanting tons of splat options so please stop.

[Jester David]

Ok, so just looking at FR products there were about 67 Adventures (of varying size) and 30 Source books produced during the 11 year 2e run that you claim resulted in TSR closing its doors and being bought out by a CCG company.

Only about 2 years later - not even having produced an edition of its own the CCG company is bought out by a Board game company. During that brief run they produced 3 of the Source books and 5 of the adventures.

So by my calculations, a slower release schedule results in the sale of your company faster then a fast release schedule results in the next edition.

WotC was purchased by Hasbro because Magic the Gather was making hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
D&D in no way, shape, or form factored into that decision.
And the sale likely only had very minor impact on D&D.

 

[Jester David]

Hey, that is great. But am I the only one who remembers when the WORST selling Pathfinder product was outselling WotC's best. I am sure they knew what they were doing then as well.

Yes. Because that never happened.

First, because the best-selling WotC product is Magic the Gathering, which at its worst sells an order of magnitude better than D&D at its best. Pathfinder's total lifetime sales are less than what MtG likely pulled in during this quarter.

Second, the best selling Pathfinder products barely outsold D&D's average product. Pathfinder tied with D&D when they released the excellent Advanced Player's Guide while D&D released Dark Sun. Once Essentials came out Pathfinder fell back to #2 again. After to that Pathfinder pulled ahead when it was the unpopular Heroes of Shadow versus the very popular Ultimate Magic. The worst Pathfinder products of the era were still crushed.

 

[Maxperson]

Bolded above. Again, you keep waffling between making two different points. I cast doubt on this one quoted above. Not the one you made in the last post.

Just because you're willing to settle for classes that just kinda sorta maybe cover a class like Jester or Scout, doesn't mean that we are willing to settle for not getting what we want. You don't get to tell us that 5e covers all of that, because it doesn't cover it for a lot of us. You get to tell us that it covers it for YOU.

 

[Maxperson]

2e - fast release schedule results in TSR closing its doors, selling off D&D to a CCG company.

False. It was too many settings combined with sinking money into a CCG that bombed. There's nothing to say that with fewer settings and more general content, TSR would have failed.

3e - fast release schedule results in a 2 year (ish) lifespan

False. It had little or nothing to do with the release rate. There were bad rules that had to be changed.

3.5e - fast release schedule results in a 4 (5) year lifespan.

Again, there's nothing that necessarily says it was due to the release rate. You are making the mistake that many do with statistics. Just because many people who get cancer have brown hair, doesn't mean that brown hair causes cancer. 3.5 failed eventually, but towards the end the product quality suffered. Assuming that it was the release rate doesn't make it true.

4e - fast release schedule results in a 2 year lifespan
4e essentials -fast release schedule results in a 2 year lifespan, WotC completely shutting down publishing for a further two years and millions of dollars spent on a completely new version of the game.

False. 4e's primary fault was that it differed too drastically from prior editions. The release rate didn't necessarily have anything to do with its failure.

So, what evidence can you produce that a faster release schedule is healthy for the hobby. I've got 4 straight version of the game where fast release killed the game within a VERY short time. What can you point to?

You've got bupkis. Your assumptions and faulty correlations don't make for fact.

 

[delericho]

2e - fast release schedule results in TSR closing its doors, selling off D&D to a CCG company.

Correlation is not causation. And in this particular case, they have almost nothing to do with one another - TSR could have adopted a 5e-like release schedule for 2nd (or, indeed, produced even fewer books), and if nothing else had changed they would still have gone to the wall.

TSR suffered a massive return of unsold novels (that they had to pay for) and at the same time they invested massively in Dragon Dice just as the bottom fell out of the fad. They weren't coming back from that.

 

[Parmandur]

Okay.
There are six real editions of D&D: 1-5 and Basic.
1e lasted from 1977 to 1989.
BECMI D&D lasted from 1983 to 2000.
2e lasted from 1989 to 1999 (or 1989 to 1995 and 1995 to 1999).
3e lasted from 2000 to 2003.
3.5e lasted from 2003 to 2007.
4e lasted from 2008 to 2010.
4e Essentials lasted from 2010 to 2012.

So the longest editions are, in order, BECMI, 1e, 2e, then 3.5e.

BECMI didn't have any real accessories beyond the level increasing books (Companion or Immortals) and the Creature Catalogue as everything else was a some combination of world book or adventure.
It's in super high demand. The books fetch a very high price on the secondary market. And the Red Box is arguably the best selling D&D product of all time.
1e only had the 8 accessories and a wealth of adventures. Even those were fairly small most of the time.

In contrast, 2e only had a half-dozen hardcover expansions. But it had soooo many softcover books and TSR struggled for money and eventually went bankrupt.
Given I'm separating Essentials, I could probably arguably separate the 1995 Revised 2nd Edition products. The mid-edition relaunch which was an attempt to revitalize the game and boost sagging sales. It really served the exact same purpose as 3.5e and Essentials. And it launched with a whole host of new accessories and tweaks to the system.

Following that were the four super short editions. Each edition grew shorter and shorter. Each edition had increasingly more "assumed" crunch.


So the longest lasting versions of D&D are BECMI and AD&D by a wide margin, which are also the ones with the fewest waves of player accessories and splatbooks.

Now, correlation does not equal causation. So the two examples could just be flukes. The short lifespan of 3e and 4e could be attributed to failures of those systems.
However, it makes sense to try a lighter release schedule to see what happens. To follow a model somewhat simmilar to the most successful and longest lasting version of D&D: BECMI - albeit without separating the Core Rules into several different products.
If the edition starts to fail, they can always add more content. But it's foolish to try what's been done four or five times in the past and expect a different result. Because once you introduce bloat you can't undo it.

Good post, and I agree with you overall; however, BD&D got started in Athe late 70's with the Holmes box, and wwas discontinued in the early 90's: and technically had four "editions," though they were all fairly compatible as I understand.

 

[Corwin]

By merit of the fact that WotC is releasing more content (however slow) would imply that WotC disagrees with you. Otherwise, they would simply say "It's already in what's already released."

Releasing more content (however slow) doesn't disagree with what I've been saying. So please reconsider what it is you *think* I'm saying and reconcile it with what I'm *actually* saying.

 

[jasper]

Releasing more content (however slow) doesn't disagree with what I've been saying. So please reconsider what it is you *think* I'm saying and reconcile it with what I'm *actually* saying.

Then be very very clear what you saying. Hey I a horrible communicator, and I don't know what you saying.

 

[jasper]

Hasbro stock price is $82.58 a share. For those wanting more content, books, etc. Buy lots and lots of voting stock. Appoint one person as your rep for stock holder meeting. Have the rep demand more content. In short, buy the company or its assets and run your way.

 

[Jester David]

Correlation is not causation. And in this particular case, they have almost nothing to do with one another - TSR could have adopted a 5e-like release schedule for 2nd (or, indeed, produced even fewer books), and if nothing else had changed they would still have gone to the wall.

TSR suffered a massive return of unsold novels (that they had to pay for) and at the same time they invested massively in Dragon Dice just as the bottom fell out of the fad. They weren't coming back from that.

But having less profit from the RPG line that was the backbone of the company likely didn't help. Had the RPG line been pulling in piles of money they might have had the space cash to weather the hit of the novels and dragon dice. Or not been in the red for as long, being able to work out deals with their printer.
Lots of companies go bankrupt and manage to recover.
TSR didn't just broke, it imploded.