D&D 5E Why is WoTc still pushing AP's when the majority of gamers want something else?

CapnZapp

Legend
I agree with Morrus insofar that "real publisher" is not useful, and can be used as a judgemental way of appearing elitist.

Still, Jester has a point. After all, game design IS elitist insofar that not many people do a truly good job of it.

I mean, I don't think Morrus is intentionally trying to compare his outfit's products to Joe Schmoe the Rabid Fan's heartbreak DMs Guild offerings.

If Dms Guild mostly offered adventures, stories, and campaign material it would be a different story. But that's not what people make money on. Its the crunchy bits that are the hard bits to get right.

So any term y'all deem acceptable that puts EN5ider and Kobold Press and Paizo etc on one side, and Joe Schmoe on the other, would be a good one. :)
 

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Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
The bar is too low...

The world has changed, and the barriers to entry in many aspects of creativity certainly decrease with every year. That doesn't make you not a publisher, though.

I suppose, if one were feeling uncharitable, one could classify some as good publishers, and some as poor publishers (and as a customer you'd be very welcome to do so - not so much as a fellow publisher). I certainly wouldn't hold your choice of license to be the defining factor there.
 

Tony Vargas

Legend
Ownership isn't part of the analogy. They own company cars, too, but those aren't analogous to Dragon and Dungeon, either.
Maybe if they're 70s Tans Ams. ;)

If it was in Dragon/Dungeon, even during the Paizo years, it was official.
I didn't pay as much attention in those years, but in the TSR years, even though The Dragon (or just 'Dragon' or Ares and/or Dungeon) was their house organ, it wasn't exactly 100% official, there was some sort of obscure legal separation. One reason, apparently, that classes featured in The Dragon were always labeled 'unofficial NPC class.'

Still, Jester has a point. After all, game design IS elitist insofar that not many people do a truly good job of it.
The hobby, itself, has something of an elitist streak. And there's not necessarily a strong correlation between the quality of game design work and the compensation for it... another way it's more like an art.
 

Sacrosanct

Legend
So any term y'all deem acceptable that puts EN5ider and Kobold Press and Paizo etc on one side, and Joe Schmoe on the other, would be a good one. :)

This is such a bad idea if the intent is to quickly assign quality to one side or the other. Anything that implies that the quality of a subjective product is tied to how "official of a business" you are, is bad. There are plenty of "official" products that are garbage (Forest Oracle for example) and plenty of really good things that are from relative unknowns (like the first Judges' Guild and wasn't Eberron a fan creation?)

I didn't pay as much attention in those years, but in the TSR years, even though The Dragon (or just 'Dragon' or Ares and/or Dungeon) was their house organ, it wasn't exactly 100% official, there was some sort of obscure legal separation. One reason, apparently, that classes featured in The Dragon were always labeled 'unofficial NPC class.'.

This is correct. Items in Dragon back in the day were about as official as item in UA now. Many of them were fan submissions.
 


KahlessNestor

Adventurer
I don't know. One of the first things we were taught in my research class for my history degree was to look at the publisher information. Peer review is still a good thing. Not that there can't be good product from self-publishing, but I have had very little success in finding such outside of the "gatekeepers".

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Ilbranteloth

Explorer
I agree with Morrus insofar that "real publisher" is not useful, and can be used as a judgemental way of appearing elitist.

Still, Jester has a point. After all, game design IS elitist insofar that not many people do a truly good job of it.

I mean, I don't think Morrus is intentionally trying to compare his outfit's products to Joe Schmoe the Rabid Fan's heartbreak DMs Guild offerings.

If Dms Guild mostly offered adventures, stories, and campaign material it would be a different story. But that's not what people make money on. Its the crunchy bits that are the hard bits to get right.

So any term y'all deem acceptable that puts EN5ider and Kobold Press and Paizo etc on one side, and Joe Schmoe on the other, would be a good one. :)

I agree in principle with Morrus' position regarding a writer/publisher, etc. This isn't really any different from the way the music industry is evolving, among others.

But people do differentiate between official and licensed. However, what I think is blurring the line more is the business model of WotC, and it's been happening for some time, as former WotC authors release material on their own. From my perspective it's all irrelevant in terms of the sources I go for new rules, adventures (or ideas anyway), etc.

However, it does matter in regards to things like Adventurer's League. No matter how good a licensed product may be, it will not be considered as useable in "official" events like Adventurer's League. The other area where it matters (at least to a certain group) is canon. Now that anybody can release Forgotten Realms content in DMsGuild, there is a lot of material that I don't think anybody would consider canon. On the other hand, George Krashos has published quite a bit, and while most of it is updated material from earlier editions, that doesn't have to be the case. With the announcement that Ed Greenwood is planning on releasing material via DMsGuild will further muddy those waters.

So is an Ed Greenwood DMsGuild release canon? Groups like Candlekeep and the FR Wiki classify Ed Greenwood published (including forum postings) as canon. But with WoTC also releasing FR material, there's probably a good chance that they might diverge a bit. Does it really matter?

I don't particularly care. Material by Ed, George, Eric L. Boyd and others are far more likely to find a home in my campaign than that written by other authors that have not been officially tied to the Forgotten Realms, but there is some other interesting material from authors not tied to any prior official FR publications.

What does matter in publishing is the quality of the content, including things like editing and art. This was painfully evident in the original era of licensed publishers, like Judges Guild, Role Aids, Bard Press, and a great number of other publishers in the late '70s to early '80s. There was certainly some interesting material released, but the quality varied greatly, even within a given publishing house, and compatibility with the existing rules could vary as well. There's no doubt that TSR had its share of junk as well, but it had a certain minimum level of quality, a standard presentation, and usually didn't stray too far from the actual rules.

So I think that even without being elitist, pointing out that En5ider (for example) has a more consistent quality than DMsGuild because they are operating more like a traditional publisher in approving submissions and editorial oversight is reasonable and has value to the customer.

But yes, If I write something and make it publicly available, for a price or free, I'm a author and a publisher, and assuming I follow the rules of the OGL, I'm official too.
 


Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
I don't know. One of the first things we were taught in my research class for my history degree was to look at the publisher information. Peer review is still a good thing. Not that there can't be good product from self-publishing, but I have had very little success in finding such outside of the "gatekeepers".

There is no peer review in private publishing. WotC's team of however many people does not submit its 'findings' to the general RPG community for review before final publishing. Neither does any other publishing team.

There are occasional examples of widespread public playtests (which is the closest analogy to peer review, I guess, although not directly so), but these are not what we're talking about here, and it doesn't particularly resemble the scientific peer review process.
 
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KahlessNestor

Adventurer
There is no peer review in private publishing. WotC's team of however many people does not submit its 'findings' to the general RPG community for review before final publishing. Neither does any other publishing team.

There are occasional examples of widespread public playtests (which is the closest analogy to peer review, I guess, although not directly so), but these are not what we're talking about here, and it doesn't particularly resemble the scientific peer review process.
It's not just peer review though. That's just an example of a benefit of gatekeepers. Gatekeepers can be bad, too, I kkow. Like not giving space to new ideas.

But I'm also thinking of reputation. Established outlets of publishing companies establish a certain level of quality. My experience is mostly with novels and such. Most self-published stuff I have read is crap, and I will never get that time back. I have only read one self-published author that was any good (Matt Colville), and I think he could easily be published, he just self-publishes out of principle (he doesn't like gate-keepers).

Now I know it's not absolute. Gatekeepers certainly publish a lot of crap (Dan Brown? Twilight?) And sometimes the standard isn't up to sniff (I have certainly read enough badly edited Star Trek novels with numerous annoying typos), but in those cases I feel justified in being annoyed. With sel-published authors I'm like, "Meh. What did you expect?"

Basically, gatekeepers mean that someone besides the author felt this was worth spending resources on to make a quality product. That is immediately more appealing than some vanity press.

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CapnZapp

Legend
Why? Let's be honest, if someone writes, are they not a writer?

Kafka, famously, published almost nothing and most of his work was burned. Yet he was still a writer.
John Kennedy Toole's masterwork was published after he killed himself. Yet he was still a writer.
Don't even get me started on Emily Dickinson ...

Are they not authors?
That's actually a great illustration of the salient point, although probably not the one you think.

I don't know Kafka or any of his relatives. I haven't stumbled across a scarred but still readable original copy (or, in this day, randomly wandered onto his creaky old website).

The way I know of Kafka (his name, his works) is through other people. Their recommendations, as it were. And not just random people. Established publishing house. Literary Critics. (Read stern boring school teachers ;-)

The question you are asking can be answered "yes, he was a writer".

But the more important answer is: "if nobody reads him, does it matter?"

After all, all your examples aren't just of people that 1. are great writers. All of your examples include 2. that are discovered too.

The analogy here is that DMs guild is like Kafka before fame and fortune (yes, I know what I did there). In contrast to when Kafka gets published by EN Publishing or gets hired by WotC.
 

CapnZapp

Legend
This is such a bad idea if the intent is to quickly assign quality to one side or the other. Anything that implies that the quality of a subjective product is tied to how "official of a business" you are, is bad. There are plenty of "official" products that are garbage (Forest Oracle for example) and plenty of really good things that are from relative unknowns (like the first Judges' Guild and wasn't Eberron a fan creation?)
I think the disconnect here is because you can look at this from two separate viewpoints.

If you're concerned about giving new talent a shot, I understand your arguments.

But if you don't care primarily about new publishing ventures growing, and instead care primarily about having a channel of strong signal to noise ratio for your own consumption, it simply is not that bad of an idea.

In other words, sure WotC produces the odd turkey. That's not an argument for wading through the entirety of something like DM's Guild uncurated, though.
 


*There is an excellent, in-depth examination of this in a recent book by Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong. I recommend it because it simplifies a lot of the issues in a fun, easy-to-read way with a lot of pop culture references.

I think what is happening is that the two of you are not agreeing on what the issues are.

I have no horse in this race, but as a piece of constructive criticism, your response to CapnZapp seemed unnecessarily condescending to me.
 


CapnZapp

Legend
Thanks and no problem.

I'm all good.

I just want to provide a counterpoint to the "we're all publishers" line, since I feel that when you take a publisher's view that's not necessarily the same as a customer's view.
 


TennyZab

First Post
I bought the Out of the Abyss book and am not a fan. It's too open ended and too difficult. I think it would have been better as a source book/ campaign setting on the Underdark. Honestly I'd rather have smaller modules like they made back in the day. Why are there so few books/products is what I want to know. Is it because this generation wants to download everything for free?
 

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