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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8912381" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>With 4E there were just so many negative factors, and it's interesting to look at ones which were different and which similar.</p><p></p><p>1) With both 4E and 1D&D, Hasbro has announced a demand that certain IPs must make more money "or else". I forget what this was called with 4E, but the value was $50m/year, and with 1D&D it's Blueprint 2.0, and it seems like D&D needs to make hundreds of millions, possibly even a billion.</p><p></p><p>So you have a similar pressure in both cases.</p><p></p><p>2) 1D&D is designed to be largely-compatible with 5E in a 1E to 2E sense - and as a player of Anciente Tymes I will say it is true you could just let a 1E class/race play at a 2E table and whilst it wouldn't be perfect, it'd be fine, and I think the same will be true with 5E and 1D&D.</p><p></p><p>So that's very much a reaction to 4E and a key difference. Probably the one that will help 1D&D the most.</p><p></p><p>3) 4E's VTT and digital initiative had a short timeline and seemingly a fairly tiny budget. 1D&D's VTT and digital initiative also has a short timeline - but not as short - nearly two years instead of one - but it apparently has a gigantic budget, it things are to be believed.</p><p></p><p>Will that help with success? Maybe, but I can't help but think both projects are on unnecessarily short timelines and seem a bit confused. Esp. if it's true Chris Cao didn't want to buy Beyond.</p><p></p><p>4) Bad press/marketing. WotC really seem to have done a "hold my beer!" here. I don't think anyone thought they could create more of a stink than 4E did with 1D&D. Everything was going relatively well. They'd even managed to announce a 3D VTT with heavy microtransactions without people rioting. Then Armageddon. A huge trashing of good will, and not just of aging grogs like most of us here. You can see in the places the Younglings discuss D&D that they're also very unhappy about this.</p><p></p><p>I think press/marketing-wise, considerably more damage has been done to 1D&D than 4E ever took. The advantage though is there's still like 1.5 years before 1D&D actually hits, but good they've gone from "sitting pretty" to having to make up incredible ground to get people back. I mean I had no doubt I'd buy the 1D&D initial set and so on, even if I wasn't super-enthusiastic, but now? Hah.</p><p></p><p>5) GSL vs OGL 1.X. The GSL was aggressive but tightly delimited. It raised ire and drove away 3PPs, but it was basically just a self-own, because it lead to 4E feeling like it was "missing something" compared to 3E. The OGL 1.X, even ignoring the PR damage seems like it's created a very different legal environment by being vastly more aggressive and less delimited. Ironically I think it may lead to 1D&D getting okay 3PP support, but quite possibly from companies who haven't signed the OGL 1.X. It also has some potential to cause further bad press and enmity towards WotC/1D&D if WotC does actually sue anyone.</p><p></p><p>6) 4E vs PF1 against 1D&D vs ???. This is a tricky one. Two months ago, I'd have said there would be no new real competitors alternatives to 1D&D, because there was just no motivation to really do that, and by making it a 1E-2E transition you basically don't give much of a reason. But with the OGL insanity, suddenly an awful lot of companies are thinking about this. Will any of them go as relatively large, compared to D&D, as PF1 did to 4E? No. Certainly not. And I doubt that one individual one will be particularly huge - but I do think several with moderate followings could act as a braking force on the success of 1D&D, and ironically the safe-ness of 1D&D may play against it here to some extent.</p><p></p><p>7) Old settings. 4E alienated people by publishing old settings and changing the lore. 5E has just done a really unimpressive job with old settings (only Eberron got a genuinely good setting book). The FR got the rough equivalent of 1989's Forgotten Realms Adventures, except less fun/detailed with SCAG. Ravenloft got the divisive and arguably under-detailed VRGtR. Spelljammer got the bizarre "cram literally all the rules AND setting into 64 pages" approach, and Planescape seems doomed to a similar fate. So I don't think 5E has really bound people to D&D with settings, and 1D&D seems very unlikely to change that unless there's a Dark Sun early in 1D&D that is also amazing, which seems... unlikely.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8912381, member: 18"] With 4E there were just so many negative factors, and it's interesting to look at ones which were different and which similar. 1) With both 4E and 1D&D, Hasbro has announced a demand that certain IPs must make more money "or else". I forget what this was called with 4E, but the value was $50m/year, and with 1D&D it's Blueprint 2.0, and it seems like D&D needs to make hundreds of millions, possibly even a billion. So you have a similar pressure in both cases. 2) 1D&D is designed to be largely-compatible with 5E in a 1E to 2E sense - and as a player of Anciente Tymes I will say it is true you could just let a 1E class/race play at a 2E table and whilst it wouldn't be perfect, it'd be fine, and I think the same will be true with 5E and 1D&D. So that's very much a reaction to 4E and a key difference. Probably the one that will help 1D&D the most. 3) 4E's VTT and digital initiative had a short timeline and seemingly a fairly tiny budget. 1D&D's VTT and digital initiative also has a short timeline - but not as short - nearly two years instead of one - but it apparently has a gigantic budget, it things are to be believed. Will that help with success? Maybe, but I can't help but think both projects are on unnecessarily short timelines and seem a bit confused. Esp. if it's true Chris Cao didn't want to buy Beyond. 4) Bad press/marketing. WotC really seem to have done a "hold my beer!" here. I don't think anyone thought they could create more of a stink than 4E did with 1D&D. Everything was going relatively well. They'd even managed to announce a 3D VTT with heavy microtransactions without people rioting. Then Armageddon. A huge trashing of good will, and not just of aging grogs like most of us here. You can see in the places the Younglings discuss D&D that they're also very unhappy about this. I think press/marketing-wise, considerably more damage has been done to 1D&D than 4E ever took. The advantage though is there's still like 1.5 years before 1D&D actually hits, but good they've gone from "sitting pretty" to having to make up incredible ground to get people back. I mean I had no doubt I'd buy the 1D&D initial set and so on, even if I wasn't super-enthusiastic, but now? Hah. 5) GSL vs OGL 1.X. The GSL was aggressive but tightly delimited. It raised ire and drove away 3PPs, but it was basically just a self-own, because it lead to 4E feeling like it was "missing something" compared to 3E. The OGL 1.X, even ignoring the PR damage seems like it's created a very different legal environment by being vastly more aggressive and less delimited. Ironically I think it may lead to 1D&D getting okay 3PP support, but quite possibly from companies who haven't signed the OGL 1.X. It also has some potential to cause further bad press and enmity towards WotC/1D&D if WotC does actually sue anyone. 6) 4E vs PF1 against 1D&D vs ???. This is a tricky one. Two months ago, I'd have said there would be no new real competitors alternatives to 1D&D, because there was just no motivation to really do that, and by making it a 1E-2E transition you basically don't give much of a reason. But with the OGL insanity, suddenly an awful lot of companies are thinking about this. Will any of them go as relatively large, compared to D&D, as PF1 did to 4E? No. Certainly not. And I doubt that one individual one will be particularly huge - but I do think several with moderate followings could act as a braking force on the success of 1D&D, and ironically the safe-ness of 1D&D may play against it here to some extent. 7) Old settings. 4E alienated people by publishing old settings and changing the lore. 5E has just done a really unimpressive job with old settings (only Eberron got a genuinely good setting book). The FR got the rough equivalent of 1989's Forgotten Realms Adventures, except less fun/detailed with SCAG. Ravenloft got the divisive and arguably under-detailed VRGtR. Spelljammer got the bizarre "cram literally all the rules AND setting into 64 pages" approach, and Planescape seems doomed to a similar fate. So I don't think 5E has really bound people to D&D with settings, and 1D&D seems very unlikely to change that unless there's a Dark Sun early in 1D&D that is also amazing, which seems... unlikely. [/QUOTE]
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