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.

 

[Kramodlog]

It's not the first time Mearls has scheduled a release, cancelled it, then released it digitally for free. The Class Compendium for Essentials was an even more dramatic example.

Heh, who knows, maybe we'll see more content sooner than we think. Or different campaign settings. I do not understand why the two APs need to be set in the FR. One in the FR and one more experimental would be cool. Do a Dark Sun AP with a psionic handbook that is released at the same time. Do Planescape with a manual of the planes. Do Eberron with with a campaign guide...

 

[Umbran]

Coke wanted to change from sugar to corn syrup, because the latter is cheaper (in the USA), so they launched 'New Coke' with lots of corn syrup, then after most people hadn't tasted old coke in a while (and raged against the New Coke), they brought back 'Coke Classic' - with corn syrup, just less of it. The taste difference between sugar-sweetened coke and corn-syrup coke classic is subtle, but with New Coke to hate on, coke classic was good enough. In the process, they also won extra shelf space, which may or may not have been part of the the plan, but led to a proliferation of soft drink products for a while.

That's commonly stated, but false.

The change in sweetener wasn't anything that diabolical. Corn syrup was cheaper than cane sugar; that's what it came down to. In 1980, five years before the introduction of New Coke, Coca-Cola had begun to allow bottlers to replace half the cane sugar in Coca-Cola with HFCS. By six months prior to New Coke's knocking the original Coca-Cola off the shelves, American Coca-Cola bottlers were allowed to use 100% HFCS. Whether they knew it or not, many consumers were already drinking Coke that was 100% sweetened by HFCS.

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp#Gugr7GSRHZ2zRz31.99

What that means for the analogy is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Coke wanted to change from sugar to corn syrup, because the latter is cheaper (in the USA), so they launched 'New Coke' with lots of corn syrup, then after most people hadn't tasted old coke in a while (and raged against the New Coke), they brought back 'Coke Classic' - with corn syrup, just less of it. The taste difference between sugar-sweetened coke and corn-syrup coke classic is subtle, but with New Coke to hate on, coke classic was good enough. In the process, they also won extra shelf space, which may or may not have been part of the the plan, but led to a proliferation of soft drink products for a while.

That's not quite how the historians tell the tale: some bottlers had switched to HFCS before the new coke thing, and some switched after, but the narrative has been about focus groups. That is, people said they actually preferred the taste of new coke to that of "coke classic."

That's important in this analogy. It's important to understanding brand. Because it's not fundamentally about whether you actually like the taste of the thing - or in D&Ds case, whether the "game balance" is actually any good. I'm pretty positive that when 4e was released, WotC had a lot of market studies showing that this is what people wanted - better balance, more options, tighter gameplay, bigger combats...the market told them what it wanted, and WotC delivered it...

...and the fizz hit the fan, so to speak. In part, because of - and here's the kicker when you compare it with D&D4e - an experience of loss.

People who LIKED the old version and felt it was just fine suddenly had to get this "new" version, which was not the same, at all. So they felt like something they cared about, something they identified with, something that they felt was part of them and who they were (because brand identity is a signifier for personality traits in heavily consumerist societies) was taken from them.

In D&D, the sense of brand identity is pretty strong - if you are a D&D player, it is often part of your personality, your experience, who you are, who you claim to be. It says something about you as a person.

Which is why you can sell a D&D movie to someone who played for like a month in college, or to someone who read the Icewind Dale trilogy as a teenager - they still identify as a "D&D Person" (in part, because this experience WAS in college or high school - when we are defining who we are mentally), and why you can get them to play a game with their kids.

It's part of why D&D is not the tabletop RPG - it's the *brand*.

(this is a bit of a Thing for me since some of my most memorable undergrad work as a student of religion and culture fell to comparing things like how fundamentalist religion and brand identity both produce a similar manichean use of language - but now I am WILDLY off-topic. )

 

[Wicht]

Coke wanted to change from sugar to corn syrup, because the latter is cheaper (in the USA), so they launched 'New Coke' with lots of corn syrup, then after most people hadn't tasted old coke in a while (and raged against the New Coke), they brought back 'Coke Classic' - with corn syrup, just less of it. The taste difference between sugar-sweetened coke and corn-syrup coke classic is subtle, but with New Coke to hate on, coke classic was good enough. In the process, they also won extra shelf space, which may or may not have been part of the the plan, but led to a proliferation of soft drink products for a while.

You do know that's just an urban legend, don't you? It didn't actually happen that way. The switch to full corn syrup actually happened some months for many bottlers before New Coke came on the market.

Edit: Heh - ninja'd not once but twice...

 

[Wicht]

Not true. Potter has a Broadway-quality voice. Dude can cut a rug, too...

[video]https://youtu.be/69WpCBLrdSQ[/video]

I had never realized how short Mr. Radcliffe was until watching that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I had never realized how short Mr. Radcliffe was until watching that.

....wouldn't trust him near the party horse, though....

(.....kind of want to play a ranger inspired by Alan Strang now....but "Have you seen Equus?" has gotta be the worst response to "So, tell me about your D&D character" I've ever heard...)

 

[Tony Vargas]

You do know that's just an urban legend, don't you? It didn't actually happen that way. The switch to full corn syrup actually happened some months for many bottlers before New Coke came on the market.

That would make it an even worse analogy.

 

[Mark CMG]

Story is a goal of a Storytelling Game but a byproduct of a Roleplaying Game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's important in this analogy. It's important to understanding brand. Because it's not fundamentally about whether you actually like the taste of the thing - or in D&Ds case, whether the "game balance" is actually any good. I'm pretty positive that when 4e was released, WotC had a lot of market studies showing that this is what people wanted - better balance, more options, tighter gameplay, bigger combats...the market told them what it wanted, and WotC delivered it...

Nod.

People who LIKED the old version and felt it was just fine suddenly had to get this "new" version, which was not the same, at all. So they felt like something they cared about, something they identified with, something that they felt was part of them and who they were (because brand identity is a signifier for personality traits in heavily consumerist societies) was taken from them.

Sure. Except the old version didn't go anywhere, and was still heavily supported by the OGL.

Just another way the analogy fails.

Which is why you can sell a D&D movie to someone who played for like a month in college, or to someone who read the Icewind Dale trilogy as a teenager - they still identify as a "D&D Person" (in part, because this experience WAS in college or high school - when we are defining who we are mentally), and why you can get them to play a game with their kids.

It's part of why D&D is not the tabletop RPG - it's the *brand*.

I'm skeptical. For one thing, we've been there - there were two D&D movies, they were awful.

For another, franchises that launch successful movies have characters. Marvel is almost nothing but a stable of characters. Star Trek re-launched with Kirk & Spock and the whole gang. LotR has the fellowship. Harry Potter is the franchise.

D&D doesn't really have that. They've got Elminster - a generic wizard - and Drizzt (and there's no way you want to wave an inherently-evil, black-skinned, matriarchal race in front of the mainstream). Dragonlance would be a Dragonlance movie, not a D&D movie.

(this is a bit of a Thing for me since some of my most memorable undergrad work as a student of religion and culture fell to comparing things like how fundamentalist religion and brand identity both produce a similar Manichean use of language - but now I am WILDLY off-topic. )

If you mean us/them constructs, yeah, there was a lot of that.

 

[Shasarak]

I keep seeing the quote that they are not going to be producing books for the sake of producing books, but I just wonder if they do not have any editors on staff any more, are they going to be producing books at all?