WotC's Nathan Stewart: "Story, Story, Story"; and IS D&D a Tabletop Game?

Forbes spoke to WotC's Brand Director & Executive Producer for Dungeons & Dragons, who talked about the 5th Edition launch and his vision for D&D's future. The interview is fairly interesting - it confirms or repeats some information we already know, and also delves a little into the topic of D&D as a wider brand, rather than as a tabletop roleplaying game.

In the interview, he reiterates previous statements that this is the biggest D&D launch ever, in terms of both money and units sold.

[lq]We are story, story, story. The story drives everything.[/lq]

He repeats WoTC's emphasis on storylines, confirming the 1-2 stories per year philosphy. "We are story, story, story. The story drives everything. The need for new rules, the new races, new classes is just based on what’s going to really make this adventure, this story, this kind kind of theme happen." He goes on to say that "We’re not interested in putting out more books for books’ sake... there’s zero plans for a Player’s Handbook 2 any time on the horizon."

As for settings, he confirms that "we’re going to stay in the Forgotten Realms for the foreseeable future." That'll disappoint some folks, I'm sure, but it is their biggest setting, commercially.

Stewart is not "a hundred percent comfortable" with the status of digital tools because he felt like "we took a great step backwards."

[lq]Dungeons and Dragons stopped being a tabletop game years or decades ago. [/lq]

His thoughts on D&D's identity are interesting, too. He mentions that "Dungeons and Dragons stopped being a tabletop game years or decades ago". I'm not sure what that means. His view for the future of the brand includes video games, movies, action figures, and more: "This is no secret for anyone here, but the big thing I want to see is just a triple-A RPG video game. I want to see Baldur’s Gate 3, I want to see a huge open-world RPG. I would love movies about Dungeons and Dragons, or better yet, serialized entertainment where we’re doing seasons of D&D stories and things like Forgotten Realms action figures… of course I’d love that, I’m the biggest geek there is. But at the end of the day, the game’s what we’re missing in the portfolio."

You can read the full interview here.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yup. PotA == good way to straddle the line. ToD == useless if you don't like Faerun. As much as I'd like to have seen PotA be set in Greyhawk or a non-setting, the way it was done is within my "suck it up" bounds. If this is the model, going forward, I'll grouse a bit but be fine. If ToD is more representative of the norm, I'll be buying less product.

It's a hard row to hoe.

The thing is, there's costs associated with WotC in general going either way. PotA isn't Faerun specific and that's both great for the haters, and lame for the fans. As a fan of settings, PotA doesn't give me a good reason to play in FR over any other setting, and ToD actually gave me a good reason to play Dragonlance. If what you want is FR goodness, the crop of adventures doesn't feature much.

But then, if they gave folks that FR-specific goodness, the haters would be repulsed like some sort of nerdy Dracula.

If all they have is the FR hammer, then every adventure will have to look something like a nail, so going "generic" is probably a nice way to not annoy the haters too much. But from where I'm sitting, it's milquetoast. I'm not already a fan of FR, and I haven't drunk the haterade, but these adventures are showing me doodly-squat about what I can do with FR, about why I *should* love FR, about why (aside from fond nostalgia) people continue to love it.

I do think that's easier to pull off when you've got other products for people to choose from, though.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

Personally, I could care less about the setting they fix themselves to for the long haul. For me and any group I've played with, we've never delved too deep into the intricacies of a setting as a whole. Our stories center around our characters rather than where our characters play. I do see why some folks cringe though.

What I'd like to see more than anything is some shorter (and cheaper) adventures. Some one-shots or maybe just a small little sandbox centered around a town/wilderness/dungeon. I imagine they could come up with a few nifty 'side' adventures that could be released alongside (or before/after) one of their big AP storylines. I think it would be great if they decided a couple big adventures per year as tentpoles, but maybe alongside those release, say, 4-6 shorter adventures per year (heck, call em modules), that perhaps could tie in thematically, and sell them in a softcover format, like the cardboard of days of yore, or the magazine format like Lost Mine. To be honest, unless some story just kicks the door down and explodes with awesomeness, I'm not buying it for $50. Some of us don't have the ability to sustain a long campaign, but I think many (if not all) gamers could benefit from a zany one-shot or a short module. I would buy the heck out of them. It would at least give another option for folks and far from compromising your overall goal of major arching storylines, it actually supports it. If story story story is the motivation then more stories seems like a good thing.

Also in this way you can free yourself up (as the publisher) to have a bit of fun and variety. You can take one short module and give it a pulpy vibe, take another and do a detective type mystery, another could be horror, another could be high cinematic adventure, etc. And all of that can be plugged in with your story theme de jour. I really don't see a drawback to a handful of cheaply produced adventures per year, especially ones that thematically connect to the overarching story. Can you see any drawback to it?

EDIT: upon a quick reflection, it does seem like they are doing 'mini' stories via Adventure League. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about books on store shelves and for purchase.

I agree wholeheartedly, though I think they might prefer digital as it means spending less on products that probably won't bring in as much as the bigger APs. I can see them bringing back Dragon and Dungeon as electronic magazines before I see softcover modules on store shelves, though of course I'd be fine with either offering.

From the interview:

"Now, with that being said, we recognize that a lot of fans love other settings, so we will be doing things to give those guys tools to support that in their own way. But we’re gonna have long cycles, and so when we go all in on Greyhawk or Dragonlance or Spelljammers, that’s going to be awhile. We’ll support that stuff, we’ll give players the tools to do things that they want to do, but the main focus will be on the Forgotten Realms for a long time."

I wish they would come right out and tell us what in the world their plan is!! I'm sorry, but not everything has to revolve around the Forgotten Realms. Everyone is like .... well it's the most fleshed-out campaign, and more importantly, the one that makes them the most money. TRUE. You know why? Because since the grey box was first released in 1987 .... it's the only campaign that had any real support. They changed everything else constantly. After Gygax was booted out of TSR, D&D has tried to distance itself from him ever since, (until those last 3-4 years of his life.) They have said time and time again in the core books for this edition that the default setting for D&D is THE D&D Multi-verse. But thanks to video games, every story takes place in the Realms. Fine .... whatever, at least come out with an update to The Realms. This is BS that we have to buy your story books to get updates to The Realms. I know most of you are going to be like .... update it yourself then!!

NO!!!!!

If that is the setting they are going to be "staying in" for "a long time" ..... they need to update the whole thing so we have a better understanding of what is going on in the Realms. Myself, like many others, didn't play 4th Edition, so I, (again .... like many others,) do not know what has changed in the Realms since 3rd. I shouldn't have to look up fan sites to find out what is going on. Like many others have stated ..... I feel psionics need to be updated for this new edition as well.

It's very frustrating as a fan of the D&D multi-verse to know that we are not going to get the complete support we crave because the setting we love has a name other than The Forgotten Realms. Sure we are going to get support .... some day .... maybe, but we won't get big, huge, beautiful maps, detailed descriptions of The Free City of Greyhawk, or Palanthas, or know how to operate a Spelljamming vessal, or a much needed update to The Lady of Pain. They have said time and again that PotA was NOT part 3 of The Temple of Elemental Evil. Yet in the introduction to that book by Mike Mearls, he clearly states that PotA is the successor to The Temple of Elemental Evil. I wonder what is next? Moving Castle Ravenloft to Amn (completely taking it out of Barovia?) Why is it so wrong then to let 3PP who love these settings, (and probably know more about them than WoTC/Hasbro .... just see Sovereign Press' 3.5 Dragonlance books. Thank-you for those Margaret Weis,) update these settings?

And the thing that rips my heart out the most is ..... I actually love 5th Edition. Unfortunately, right now I'm only a player, and like one other person said here, I too will not be DM'ing in this new edition anytime soon. I'll save that for Pathfinder.

I'm actually wondering if they're just slowing down the supplement treadmill to a longer timescale. In 4E, they dedicated each year to a new campaign setting. For 5E, we could be looking at 2-3 years of Forgotten Realms APs, followed by 2-3 years of Greyhawk, 2-3 years of Dark Sun, Eberron, Planescape, etc. Or maybe only the Realms is big enough to have a full 2-3 block, and once they start releasing official materials for the other settings they'll start cycling between them with each new AP.

And now I'm wondering if they're just going to hold off on putting out a FR book until they've done ~6 FR APs they can strip all of the setting content out of and turn it into a Sword Coast Gazetteer. New prediction - in an AP or two from now we'll see one focusing primarily on the city of Waterdeep itself, so that they have a solid Waterdeep chapter for the eventual FR compendium collating all of the Realmslore appearing in the APs.

 

[Umbran]

This, 100 times this. If they release a good OGL, I'm completely fine with WotC doing whatever else they want. If they don't, well, it almost seems like they're just thumbing their nose at us.

We are a bunch with a great sense of entitlement. I am not sure if perhaps this sense of entitlement is worse for the hobby than whatever lacking license scheme or production schedule they might have.

How? Well, we spend so much effort complaining and bad-mouthing WotC over how they don't give us whatever the speaker feels we are entitled to - imagine how that looks to folks who are new to the game!

 

[Harry Dresden]

Besides, I'm having a hard time believing that you have already exhausted the contents of the three core books already.

I find this part very disingenuous. If we go by this thinking then we should still be playing basic D&D because let's face it, the imagination is limitless.

Also, what of I don't like all the options in the core books? What if I don't like all the Sorcerer subclasses, or I want different magic items, or more class and racial options?

The core books aren't AP'S where you try and release the next one when most groups are wrapping up the first one. The core books are the rules that contain options that people can use in their games, but not use them just for the sake of using them. Whether or not I exhausted everything is completely irrelevant.

You have to understand, D&D has always had a rather "meaty" product release and when you go from one extreme to the next then you make a lot of people angry. This doesn't solve rules bloat, this is almost throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Most gamers are used to having loads of options and books to buy.

 

[fjw70]

I am not really sure how. At the moment, they have small-company resources working on the game itself. In a small company, they'd have small-company resources. How would that be better?

When a company expands its operations it has to look at what that return on the investment will be. A small company could have a smaller threshold for that return (as I suspect Paizo does).

I can't really be too critical of WotC since I love the game they produced (I think they hit home run --for me personally -- with 4e and 5e). I do wish there were more smaller adventure products or that they would make the AL stuff available for the general market, but I have 3PPs and older edition stuff to use with minimal conversion necessary.

My big need/want from them right now are ebook versions of their stuff. Hopefully that happens soon.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I am not really sure how. At the moment, they have small-company resources working on the game itself. In a small company, they'd have small-company resources. How would that be better?

Paizo is a much smaller company with small company resources. The difference is that the people in charge of those resources, in addition to making money, care about the tabletop game that their customers enjoy. IMHO what good are mega company resources if they aren't being used to support the things the fans want?

Driving revenue via "the brand" is corporate talk for we don't really what the product is so long as it makes X profit.

 

[Mercule]

The thing is, there's costs associated with WotC in general going either way. PotA isn't Faerun specific and that's both great for the haters, and lame for the fans. As a fan of settings, PotA doesn't give me a good reason to play in FR over any other setting, and ToD actually gave me a good reason to play Dragonlance. If what you want is FR goodness, the crop of adventures doesn't feature much.

But then, if they gave folks that FR-specific goodness, the haters would be repulsed like some sort of nerdy Dracula.

If all they have is the FR hammer, then every adventure will have to look something like a nail, so going "generic" is probably a nice way to not annoy the haters too much. But from where I'm sitting, it's milquetoast. I'm not already a fan of FR, and I haven't drunk the haterade, but these adventures are showing me doodly-squat about what I can do with FR, about why I *should* love FR, about why (aside from fond nostalgia) people continue to love it.

I do think that's easier to pull off when you've got other products for people to choose from, though.

Agree, fully.

If ToD had been in Dragonlance, then I'd have run the module and used Dragonlance. Even though I'm generally indifferent to Krynn, there's enough nostalgia there that it would have called to me. I've been so vigorously bludgeoned by the Realms, though, that I just don't want any of it.

My group was discussing this, last week. There are a couple of us that really, really liked the concept of Dark Sun, but never wanted to use it, long term. A 256 page AP would be an easy sell. Spend a six to twelve months playing on Athas, feel like we've really experienced it, then move on. Ditto for most of the other settings. We all agreed that it'd keep us entertained for years to just have one "campaign in a box" set in each of the existing worlds. Honestly, I'd probably even be up for an honest to goodness, deep and tightly coupled "year of Forgotten Realms" if I knew there was other stuff in the pipe.

To the point of having other products, I wouldn't complain (much) if they did two solid APs a year: one to build the FR "brand" and make the fans happy, and one that was either generic or had PotA-style conversion notes.

Actually, I could see where ToD could be the perfect "unhappy medium" of being too Realms-specific for people like me, but not satisfying for true Realms fans. It incorporated enough Realms locations that it was hard to decouple, but it didn't actually seem to dig into anything uniquely Realmsian. Instead, it was a generic foe set against very specific scenery.

 

[Halivar]

Paizo is a much smaller company with small company resources. The difference is that the people in charge of those resources, in addition to making money, care about the tabletop game that their customers enjoy. IMHO what good are mega company resources if they aren't being used to support the things the fans want?

Driving revenue via "the brand" is corporate talk for we don't really what the product is so long as it makes X profit.

I don't see it that way. It's true, Hasbro has more resources, and it's true, even WotC as a division has more resources than Paizo. But game for game, Paizo has fifty people and D&D has 15, and I don't for a second think those 15 people don't care deeply about the desktop game. I think they do. They aren't corporate robots; they are gamers just like us. One of them is tasked, however, with driving the brand and he's doing the best he can, I think.

 

[HonorBoundSamurai632]

I'm actually wondering if they're just slowing down the supplement treadmill to a longer timescale. In 4E, they dedicated each year to a new campaign setting. For 5E, we could be looking at 2-3 years of Forgotten Realms APs, followed by 2-3 years of Greyhawk, 2-3 years of Dark Sun, Eberron, Planescape, etc. Or maybe only the Realms is big enough to have a full 2-3 block, and once they start releasing official materials for the other settings they'll start cycling between them with each new AP.

And now I'm wondering if they're just going to hold off on putting out a FR book until they've done ~6 FR APs they can strip all of the setting content out of and turn it into a Sword Coast Gazetteer. New prediction - in an AP or two from now we'll see one focusing primarily on the city of Waterdeep itself, so that they have a solid Waterdeep chapter for the eventual FR compendium collating all of the Realmslore appearing in the APs.

You know what Trickster .... I think this is an awesome idea!! I could be patient for this. It just bothers me that they just refuse to let us know what in the world is going on. I have to say this. My honest opinion ...... it's not MY fault that sales started dropping off at the tail-end of 3.5 (some of those books felt like they weren't even playtested.) It's not my fault that 4th Edition didn't make Hasbro the kind of money Hasbro was hoping to see. It's not my fault that Pathfinder was such a success. Some of the things that WoTC is doing, it feels like I'm the one being punished for not supporting 4th like I did the previous editions to it.

I pray someone from WoTC/Hasbro sees your post!! Having to wait for something like this would suck, but it would be worth it in the end!! I would so back something like that 100%. Just knowing we'd be getting the multi-verse update, would cool my jets big time!

 

[DongMaster]

The difference is that the people in charge of those resources, in addition to making money, care about the tabletop game that their customers enjoy.

Pure speculation!

You have no idea if WotC care more or less for their product, fans or brand than Paizo. Paizo publish books to make money, and do it while enjoying it as well. They aren't a social service catering to every whim of their fan base. WotC is beginning to sound more like a made up Evil Empire by the vocalists on the internet, whom by no means, are those that represent the fan base.