D&D (2024) Wizards of the Coast Backtracks on D&D Beyond and 2014 Content

Wizards of the Coast posted an overnight update stating that they are not going forward with previously released plans to require those wishing to use some 2014 content on D&D Beyond to use the Homebrew function to manually enter it. Instead, all the content including spells and magic items will be included. From the update:

D&D (2024) - How D&D Beyond Will Handle Access To 2014 Rules

D&D Beyond has announced how the transition to the new 2024 edition will work on the platform, and how legacy access to the 2014 version of D&D will be implemented. You will still be able to access the 2014 Basic Rules and core rulebooks. You will still be able to make characters using the 2014...

www.enworld.org

Last week we released a Changelog detailing how players would experience the 2024 Core Rulebooks on D&D Beyond. We heard your feedback loud and clear and thank you for speaking up.

Our excitement around the 2024 Core Rulebooks led us to view these planned updates as welcome improvements and free upgrades to existing content. We misjudged the impact of this change, and we agree that you should be free to choose your own way to play. Taking your feedback to heart, here’s what we’re going to do:

Players who only have access to the 2014 Player’s Handbook will maintain their character options, spells, and magical items in their character sheets. Players with access to the 2024 and 2014 digital Player’s Handbooks can select from both sources when creating new characters. Players will not need to rely on Homebrew to use their 2014 player options, including spells and magic items, as recommended in previous changelogs.

Please Note:

Players will continue to have access to their free, shared, and purchased items on D&D Beyond, with the ability to use previously acquired player options when creating characters and using character sheets.

We are not changing players’ current character sheets, except for relabeling and renaming. Examples include Races to Species, Inspiration to Heroic Inspiration, and Cast Spell to Magic.

We’re dedicated to making D&D Beyond the ultimate digital toolset for Dungeons & Dragons, continuously enhancing the platform to ensure you can create, customize, and play your game just as you envision it. From your first one-shot to multi-year campaigns and everything in between, we're grateful to be on this journey with you.

- The D&D Studio

 

[EzekielRaiden]

when was that not the case? I’d argue 4e already resurrected that, it it had ever gone away

What are you talking about? 4e has plenty of excellent design in it, and its management was generally pretty good, barring things like the choice to use Silverlight or the tragic murder-suicide on the digital tools team. It's (almost exclusively) the presentation and a couple decisions that, while not the best, weren't that bad. The only truly boneheaded, "WTF are you doing?!" aspect was the GSL--which, admittedly, was pretty bad! But it was nowhere near as bad as the attempt to retroactively eliminate the OGL.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

What are you talking about? 4e has plenty of excellent design in it, and its management was generally pretty good, barring things like the choice to use Silverlight or the tragic murder-suicide on the digital tools team. It's (almost exclusively) the presentation and a couple decisions that, while not the best, weren't that bad. The only truly boneheaded, "WTF are you doing?!" aspect was the GSL--which, admittedly, was pretty bad! But it was nowhere near as bad as the attempt to retroactively eliminate the OGL.

I think 4e is interesting from the perspective of what can be learned. Commercially it failed from WotC's point of view, and did so quite badly. This is evident in the 180 they did with 5e, and the shorter lifespan of 4e relative to both 3e and 5e.

In a video on celebrating 50 years of D&D, hosted by the former owner of WotC. Link below, relevant part is around the 10 to 15 minute mark. They talk briefly about 4e when asked about the start of 5e development. Mike Mearls tells a short story about, what amounts to, release day activity. And players issues with the length of combat. Other designers contribute with thoughts as well.

We can find similar discourse about this issue on social media from the time. It's all over the place. So WotC has run from some of the design principals used in 4e. I believe this to be an error, as you can always find good in things even in failure. But it's understandable from a commercial perspective.

But to only analyze 4e design in a vacuum ignores the human element the designers lay out in the video. 4e had many design choices that may look good on paper, but were repulsive to many players at the time. We saw this, back then, as players en masse sticking with 3.5e or moving to Pathfinder. We know this through surveys of hobby stores on what was selling - link below.

That human element is a real aspect when assessing the design. If design is good on paper, but fails to captivate an audience in the desired manner, the issue is the design. Blaming the humans is, well, not productive. The theoretical design is not relevant in that case, at least commercially. The design question should be, in relation to 4e, what parts of the system are usable while avoiding the obvious human issues the design as a whole had.

This avoids whiteboard analysis convincing us that the design is "good," and the resulting disconnect with player reception of that design. I think this is important because whiteboard analysis can be misleading, and lead to repeat design mistakes.

Just a thought.

Video: Site showing 4e's lack of commercial success: Is Pathfinder selling better than D&D?

 

[Umbran]

It has everything to do with compatibility. If you are pushing into the online world, which everyone is saying is WotC's plan, and you are touting compatibility in your ramp-up to the launch, being able to still use the old material after launch is entirely expected. Otherwise, you weren't telling the truth the whole time.

Gee, everyone seems to want to interpret everything so as to be able to call others liars.

But, no. They have maintained that the rules themselves would be compatible.

They made no promises about how the new and old rules would be presented on DDB. Whatever choices they make about DDB, that does not change the truth value of the statement about the rules themselves.

In effect, DDB is a software tool product that presents rules, but is separate from them as a product offering. Statements about one product do not imply things about the other.

 

[Alzrius]

I think 4e is interesting from the perspective of what can be learned. Commercially it failed from WotC's point of view, and did so quite badly. This is evident in the 180 they did with 5e, and the shorter lifespan of 4e relative to both 3e and 5e.

I wanted to make a separate thread about the panels that Ben Riggs gave at Gen Con, but never managed to find the time, so I might as well mention this here.

As part of his research for his next book, Riggs found out that after 4E folded, WotC was actually in talks with Fantasy Flight Games to license the D&D brand to them. As in, 5E would have been made by FFG rather than WotC.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I wanted to make a separate thread about the panels that Ben Riggs gave at Gen Con, but never managed to find the time, so I might as well mention this here.

As part of his research for his next book, Riggs found out that after 4E folded, WotC was actually in talks with Fantasy Flight Games to license the D&D brand to them. As in, 5E would have been made by FFG rather than WotC.

Yeah. When I say it failed badly from WotC's perspective, I'm being kind to 4e.

I think this is important context though. The commercial failure from WotC's perspective, might be a wild success to another publisher. If the GSL was ever dumped into creative commons, I'd be interested to see if a small publisher could maintain a system with a modest following using that base.

Just because the human elements related to the design didn't work for WotC's desire for mass appeal, doesn't mean a publisher like FFG wouldn't be perfectly happy with it's sales.

EDIT: The first post was me thinking about it from the perspective of WotC's mass appeal goal.

 

[SteveC]

I wanted to make a separate thread about the panels that Ben Riggs gave at Gen Con, but never managed to find the time, so I might as well mention this here.

I hope you do make that thread, but any news is very interesting. I'm just wondering if he had any evidence for what he was saying. I'm a "trust but verify" sort of person.

 

[mamba]

What are you talking about? 4e has plenty of excellent design in it,

and yet a large part of the player base rejected it, so as far as 'Not having people to tell them that their design and management decisions are unwise' that very much fits the bill from my perspective. It's not about whether the rule is good or bad, it's about whether you understand what your audience wants or not.

As you point out, it had its own OGL fiasco in the form of the GSL too.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think 4e is interesting from the perspective of what can be learned. Commercially it failed from WotC's point of view, and did so quite badly. This is evident in the 180 they did with 5e, and the shorter lifespan of 4e relative to both 3e and 5e.

It only failed because WotC's--or, rather, Hasbro's--expectations were sky-goddamn-high. It had to earn income loosely equivalent to Magic: the Gathering. That was never going to happen regardless of conditions. Then it got dealt possibly the single worst hand it could ever have gotten without considering the boneheaded mistakes (GSL) or unwise but hardly unusual development choices (releasing about 6-12 months before it really should have): one of the worst economic recessions ever (albeit not an actual economic depression), a murder-suicide on the critical digital tools team, the collapse of one of the nation's largest book sellers.

But to only analyze 4e design in a vacuum ignores the human element the designers lay out in the video. 4e had many design choices that may look good on paper, but were repulsive to many players at the time. We saw this, back then, as players en masse sticking with 3.5e or moving to Pathfinder. We know this through surveys of hobby stores on what was selling - link below.

They were "repulsive" because many 3.X fans were absolutely unwilling to accept anything but the horrible broken, buggy mess they had, because they loved it and didn't want to part with any piece of it. It took 4e's lifespan--and Pathfinder carrying the torch for them--for them to finally start admitting, okay, yeah, this is really buggy and broken and needs fixing.

But because the edition warriors won, we're still stuck with the HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE design of 3e, almost 25 years later.

Just a thought.

With all due respect, given the...interesting beliefs about game design I see on this forum and elsewhere? I don't think the general public has the first idea what makes a good game, and the people who designed 5e displayed that in living color with numerous issues.

They gave us something that the old hands loved--and which was full of bugs and bad writing. A design that is SUPER appealing but crashes and burns on the regular is worse than a design that is unappealing but works extremely well. That doesn't mean 4e doesn't have mistakes--it does! I've even eagerly discussed them when relevant!--but the vast, VAST, VAST majority of what people complained about had diddly-squat to do with what 4e actually was.

The fact that even to this day, you get people celebrating "new" things in 5e that...were actually developed in 4e? And that the multiple things 5e butchered from 4e consistently produce some of the most bitter complaints (like "whack-a-mole" healing)? Yeah, kinda shows that a crap-awful design that feels nice will still run into some pretty damn serious trouble.

It'll just make $$$ for the company before folks figure that out. Classic problem, shows up all the time with video games. Reputable series produces a new game that sells like hotcakes, but the game itself is actually crap. Company still pockets millions and promises to do better. This lasts for one new game, maybe two, and the cycle repeats.

Video: Site showing 4e's lack of commercial success: Is Pathfinder selling better than D&D?

Which is and has always been a load of bull. This COMPLETELY ignores anything except the specific stores ICv2 talks to....including the extremely important D&D Insider, which was a huge money-maker. I don't recall the exact numbers, but folks were able to determine a minimum number of paid subscriptions back during 4e's day, because there was a forum group which every forum-registered user would be automatically added to if they were subscribed, and automatically removed from if they weren't.

It had tens of thousands of people in it. IIRC, the numbers peaked somewhere in the low 100k, 110k range. Even if you assume that only earned them $10/month per person, that's $12 million a year being completely ignored by ICv2.

Add to this the fact that WotC effectively stopped publishing 4e in 2011. Of course PF1e is going to outsell something that made all of TWO books in 2012!

And this is exactly why it's so frustrating to discuss 4e and its legitimate flaws (both in game design and in business management)--people are SO committed to the myth that 4e was a horrible abject failure, that it could not possibly have achieved ANY financial success, that they'll straight-up invent stuff that isn't there, ignore stuff that is, or use outrightly biased data to support the story they're committed to.

4e did not sell as well as WotC (or, rather, Hasbro) wanted--because what they wanted could not happen even if players had LOVED it. It was, certainly, divisive--though much of the signalling WotC got early on they DID in fact listen to! (As an example, the "Golden Wyvern Adept" problem, and how players didn't so much want to have their cake and eat it too, so much as wanting to never have a cake in the first place and yet also eat it.)

 

[Alzrius]

I hope you do make that thread, but any news is very interesting. I'm just wondering if he had any evidence for what he was saying. I'm a "trust but verify" sort of person.

He didn't name any names, if that's what you're asking; as I recall, he said most of his sources are people who were laid off from WotC last year.

To be clear, his next book (which has the working title of "Total Party Kill") is going to be about 5E, specifically with regards to its creation and the subsequent effect that its success had within WotC. (Riggs also followed it up with another panel, held immediately after, where he doubled down and expanded on his "the golden age of TTRPGs is dead" opinion; I have pictures of both on my phone that I need to dig out.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

and yet a large part of the player base rejected it, so as far as 'Not having people to tell them that their design and management decisions are unwise' that very much fits the bill from my perspective. It's not about whether the rule is good or bad, it's about whether you understand what your audience wants or not

Except they DID listen. They did!

People cheered when they said they were getting rid of Vancian casting. And then when the actual game came out, people excoriated WotC for it. People absolutely ripped WotC to shreds over the "Golden Wyvern Adept" discussion, how DARE WotC decide what flavor THEIR characters would have! So they kept the flavor light and minimal to respond to customer complaints....only for those customers to then rip them ANOTHER new one, because how DARE they make books that are so lacking in flavor!!!

The D&D fanbase was, simply, unpleasable. And as we are now seeing with design choices in both 5.0 and 5.5e, design by committee and farming out all your decisions to the madding crowd has its own set of delightful ills. It just, as noted above, rewards the company with mega-bucks and then causes the controversy afterward, so the company is rewarded for doing it and will thus keep doing so.

As you point out, it had its own OGL fiasco in the form of the GSL too.

And yet this had almost no impact on the actual players--it was only the producer side. The players revolted when WotC tried to actually kill the OGL last year.