D&D General What Does New Coke Tell Us About Designing for D&D

[Celebrim]

1) I find it interesting how much better the CoC brand is managed than the D&D brand over time. CoC has never really fractured its base or left behind a large portion of its market by having wholly incompatible ideas of what it should be as a game. D&D does this all the time and is still doing it despite 50 years of design time. You'd think by now the technology would have evolved to the point that D&D knew what sort of game it was and didn't need to reinvent itself, but yet the need to reinvent the brand keeps coming up and it keeps shedding money by losing its old customers to knock offs of its older products.

2) There really is getting to be more than a coincidence that initially the even numbered releases of D&D are less well received than the odd numbered releases. (I'm ignoring the many 0.5 releases and counting this present release as 6e.) I can't tell if this is the human nature of the consumer or the human nature of corporations, or maybe a bit of both.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You wouldn’t want to look up aspartame then.

I'm sure I'll get by somehow.

 

[Celebrim]

It's probably a good thing I can't get Mountain Dew with real sugar in the US

You can, it's just bottled in smaller batches by the bottlers and treated as a specialty product. Look for it in specialty grocery stores or websites. I used to not get real sugar Dr. Pepper very often because it wasn't frequently distributed outside of Texas, but it's getting easier to get so I frequently have bottles of real sugar Dr. Pepper in glass on the pantry shelf to be a special treat.

 

[Oofta]

You can, it's just bottled in smaller batches by the bottlers and treated as a specialty product. Look for it in specialty grocery stores or websites. I used to not get real sugar Dr. Pepper very often because it wasn't frequently distributed outside of Texas, but it's getting easier to get so I frequently have bottles of real sugar Dr. Pepper in glass on the pantry shelf to be a special treat.

My local grocery store did carry it for a while but I managed to successfully ignore it. I'm not a zero sugar zealot but I avoid Dew with real sugar because I don't want to get hooked again.

 

[payn]

1) I find it interesting how much better the CoC brand is managed than the D&D brand over time. CoC has never really fractured its base or left behind a large portion of its market by having wholly incompatible ideas of what it should be as a game. D&D does this all the time and is still doing it despite 50 years of design time. You'd think by now the technology would have evolved to the point that D&D knew what sort of game it was and didn't need to reinvent itself, but yet the need to reinvent the brand keeps coming up and it keeps shedding money by losing its old customers to knock offs of its older products.

CoC has an entirely different reality than D&D. D&D is the face of RPGs, for better or worse, and CoC can just be CoC without any of the pressure fro change or adaption for the masses of RPG players. It's also why CoC will never be the face of RPGs. So, each has its pros and cons.

2) There really is getting to be more than a coincidence that initially the even numbered releases of D&D are less well received than the odd numbered releases. (I'm ignoring the many 0.5 releases and counting this present release as 6e.) I can't tell if this is the human nature of the consumer or the human nature of corporations, or maybe a bit of both.

Other then folks feelings; how so?

 

[mamba]

Change, for a game like D&D, is an odd thing. Is it change for change sake to boost sales?

it has always been to boost sales, the first one where this may not be the case was 5.5

 

[mamba]

find it interesting how much better the CoC brand is managed than the D&D brand over time. CoC has never really fractured its base

depends on what you use as your criteria I guess, by sales / market share D&D is clearly the better managed brand

 

[GreyLord]

it has always been to boost sales, the first one where this may not be the case was 5.5

IMO....

I think over the past year or two sales were finally beginning to fall a bit for 5e, and seeing that trend was one of the driving forces to reinvigorate the brand.

In addition, there was the drive to focus on D&D beyond and online ventures, and they needed a vehicle that was not out in a printable form (D&D basic) already, so that people would turn to beyond for their free version.

 

[Micah Sweet]

depends on what you use as your criteria I guess, by sales / market share D&D is clearly the better managed brand

By consistency of product and portion of satisfied fans I think I'd have to give it to CoC.

 

[Remathilis]

There really is getting to be more than a coincidence that initially the even numbered releases of D&D are less well received than the odd numbered releases. (I'm ignoring the many 0.5 releases and counting this present release as 6e.) I can't tell if this is the human nature of the consumer or the human nature of corporations, or maybe a bit of both.

Well sure, if you redefine your data sets to create the pattern you want, you'll get the pattern you want.

5.24 isn't 6e. If it is, than 3.5 should count and 5.24 is 7e. If you count Basic and OD&D, it's 9e. If your arguing for only base mechanic significant changes, it's still only 5e (Basic, Advanced, 3e, 4e, 5e). You have to arbitrarily define each revision as an edition or not to make your Star Trek pattern fit.