D&D General Why grognards still matter

[Thomas Shey]

I don't buy from WotC. Haven't in a while for the most part. I far prefer smaller creators. But the game I play is still largely based on WotC's game, so there are plenty of relevant to me topics being discussed in the WotC 5e forums. I am lately trying to avoid 5.5 threads at least.

In some respects you're in a particularly bad spot because (and feel free to correct me) you want something pretty D&D adjacent, but in some respects that's harder to get players for than either the current edition of D&D, or games radically different from it. This tends to push you toward the current edition proper, which means you need to deal with the issues connected to its publishing to some degree or another, like it or not.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In some respects you're in a particularly bad spot because (and feel free to correct me) you want something pretty D&D adjacent, but in some respects that's harder to get players for than either the current edition of D&D, or games radically different from it. This tends to push you toward the current edition proper, which means you need to deal with the issues connected to its publishing to some degree or another, like it or not.

That is all uncomfortably true, yes. Fortunately I've gotten pretty good at shilling Level Up to my players as they filter into my group. I still use WotC 5e Classic for the game I run with my kids as players, because A5e is more complicated and they're new to tabletop, but even there I use Level Up DM-side.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

None of them is a witch. Relax.

Snerk. Nah, it's the center of mass I have questions about.

 

[pemerton]

I know you can't make Waterdeep a Greyhawk city

Why not?

I used maps of Waterdeep for Dyvers in one long-running Greyhawk game.

 

[pemerton]

What a sad thing to be all one cares about if your business is making things people use for fun.

What else would you expect a list commercial publishing company to care about? They are not a charity, nor an artisan producer.

Fair enough, and you definitely shouldn't be a jerk, but I do feel the equation changes a bit (a bit) when the restaurant you don't like is by far the most popular, and all most people ever talk about, and every other restaurant is compared to it as it sets some kind of objective standard. That's a little annoying if you still like to eat at restaurants, especially if what you do like is close enough to the popular place that conversation has a fair amount of overlap.

I don't really understand your apparent obsession with WotC and what it publishes.

There are lot of other RPGs, and other RPG publishers, out there.

That doesn't make it right. 8f anything that's a strong argument against big business.

So then instead of worrying so much about WotC, why not engage with some other RPGs?

 

[pemerton]

Exactly, which means maximizing purchases from the brodest customer base possible, not focusing on a single portion of that group at the expense of other parts based on title sales. Otherwise why print more than the PHB?

D&D is not playable - at least, not straightforwardly - with only a PHB. So for the PHB to have value, the DMG and MM also have to be published. Also, probably, some scenarios/modules/adventure paths.

In principle there is an optimisation level for all this - that is, a degree of support products that maximise sales of the core product (PHB) without costing more than the marginal gains from those extra core sales. Presumably WotC has finance staff, and market research staff, who can calculate or at least estimate what that optimisation level is.

I assume that WotC's publication strategy reflects that calculation/estimate.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I don't really understand your apparent obsession with WotC and what it publishes.
There are lot of other RPGs, and other RPG publishers, out there.
So then instead of worrying so much about WotC, why not engage with some other RPGs?

People interact with their hobbies in different ways - imagine telling a long time Manchester United fan (if there are any left ) that they should engage/support another football team.
The Maldini family have been AC Milan loyalists for 5 generations!

(EDIT - I see Paolo Maldini was sacked as technical director of the club recently )

 

[Emerikol]

Why not?

I used maps of Waterdeep for Dyvers in one long-running Greyhawk game.

As a published product, it would be hard to do a big city. I'm not saying someone in the wild can't adapt it. You could though publish a town and say it could be here in the forgotten realms or there in Greyhawk.

 

[Emerikol]

What we have here is numbers of buyers and average volume for that group.

Group A 100 1000
Group B 1000 100
Group C 500 200

All three of those groups are equally valuable. Grognards as a group that plays D&D is definitely one of the smaller groups but they are also by far the highest spending on their hobbies in general. Grognards being those aged 45+.

We don't know though if Grognards x purchases > Other Groups x purchases. Some of the other groups are bigger for sure and they probably buy at least the PHB but also other stuff too.

You can't really know the answer until you know the sales and gross profit by group which I'm sure WOTC has and we do not. But assuming WOTC is not completely stupid in their business practices, not a safe bet but we can assume it for now, then for sure the Grognards are not big enough to warrant all of their attention but they aren't small enough to ignore entirely. 5e was a move towards the Grognards even if it wasn't 100% in their direction. This is why earlier I said it was likely somewhere in between.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What else would you expect a list commercial publishing company to care about? They are not a charity, nor an artisan producer.

I don't really understand your apparent obsession with WotC and what it publishes.

There are lot of other RPGs, and other RPG publishers, out there.

So then instead of worrying so much about WotC, why not engage with some other RPGs?

I do, but what I like is close enough to WotC's that the same general topics of interest keep coming up, only they come up in the context of WotC's game because it rules the roost. On the occasion there's a conversation about a non-D&D style game I like (like Cyberpunk, L5R classic, or many non-narrative supers games), or specifically about a D&D-style game I favor (like Level Up, ACKS, DCC, or the Without Number series) i do participate. But such conversations are far less common that anything using WotC's game as a context.