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]

Obviously you think you know better than WotC how to make money with the D&D IP. I haven't seen any evidence of that, though.

Like many others I called 4e a bad move. That is evidence. Does it mean I'm alway right? No. But it is some evidence.

All you keep saying is that they should be more like Paizo. Yet as far as I can tell (eg Amazon rankings, testimony from game store owners, etc) 5e is selling better than PF. Just as 4e sold better than PF for a good part of its publication period (at least the first half, I think).

5e is new. A big start is not a surprise. The question is whether it can sustain that. Right now it doesn't look so good. How do you stay the #1 seller of something if you propose very limited books to sell? How many PHB do you expect people to buy?

And D&D is on top. But in fact ICv2 measures sales. It doesn't measure popularity, because people can - and do - play RPGs without buying product.

AD&D, for instance, has remained popular for 30+ years, with barely any sales at all for the past 15 of those.

That's part of the commercial challenge of being a RPG publisher - that you have to persuade the people who play your game to buy stuff that they don't need to play your game! WotC seems to have decided that it's going to be easier and more commercially effective to persuade people to buy non-RPG stuff that they don't need to play the game.

I'm not the one who mentioned popularity. You did.

As for the ICv2 ranking, D&D is on top. For now. The edition is new. It has been two years since WotC published any D&D books and there was a build up with the public playtest. The ranking is not a surprise. The lasting power is the question.

Right now is looks like a boom and bust model. With a CEO seeing core books selling so many books, why not have another edition soonish?

 

[Kramodlog]

And we wonder why no one from WotC comes around to talk anymore. :/

Saying Mearls is good with words and is convicing is an insult now?

Also, this is factually untrue. Mearls was here commenting recently and so was the author the future tech article.

Maybe they do not comment here because they are tired of people white knighting them when they can handle posters by themselves.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Forgive the tangent, but this paragraph caught my eye:

At its core, D&D is a game that exists (IMO) to enable me to interactively tell stories with friends. In that regard, I agree with Nathan ("Stories, stories, stories"). My disagreement comes in that I think the key differentiating factor for D&D is that it's there to tell stories that occur on my world, not a published setting. Published settings are a great plus, but not core. Ditto for published adventures.

And yet, there's still shared lore. If you tell someone that your homebrew campaign is about trying to survive on Falx, the planet of the Tarrasques, they understand you. If your PCs meet a weird, stringy chimpanzee-faced gaunt warrior with yellow skin and a greatsword, and one of them says, "It's a githyanki! Run!", all of your players (not PCs) are benefitting from the shared setting. Squid-faced illithids, eye tyrants, mimics, ropers, spelljamming, the planes... all of these setting concepts can support a homebrew campaign just as easily as a published campaign.

What's my point? I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. But I think it might be that D&D stories are best supported with tropes (if "beholders and illithids" can be considered a trope) and not with campaign settings or novels per se; although novels and campaign books are one potential way to introduce and popularize a D&D trope.

So anyway, we'll see what they do with "story, story, story."

 

[Tony Vargas]

5e is new. A big start is not a surprise. The question is whether it can sustain that. Right now it doesn't look so good. How do you stay the #1 seller of something if you propose very limited books to sell? How many PHB do you expect people to buy?

They could be expecting new players to buy PHs. We're up to 3 new-to-gaming players at our local Encounters venue. That may not sound like much, but it's pretty good retention compared to 3e or post-fad classic D&D, and there's also returning 2e players represented, as well as the regulars who blithely made the transition to 5e after starting with 4e. It's not just current players who buy core books (once). New players buy core books. Returning players buy core books.

As for the ICv2 ranking, D&D is on top. For now.

That's the current data point, yep.

Right now is looks like a boom and bust model. With a CEO seeing core books selling so many books, why not have another edition soonish?

That's not implausible. Each modern edition has had a shorter run than the last, and a half-ed. But, they also had much faster publication of supplements, yet still couldn't match the initial core sales.

 

[Hussar]

Saying Mearls is good with words and is convicing is an insult now?

Also, this is factually untrue. Mearls was here commenting recently and so was the author the future tech article.

Maybe they do not comment here because they are tired of people white knighting them when they can handle posters by themselves.

Mearls has posted three times this year, and seven times last year, and none of his posts are related to the business side of the game.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/search.php?searchid=7668287

 

[Shasarak]

Yes I queried the statement that 4e financed 5e...

This is the statement where 4e as a financial failure is specifically brought up...

I always imagined that the 5e development was financed by the sales of the OD, 1E, 2E and 3e reprints.

 

[Kramodlog]

They could be expecting new players to buy PHs. We're up to 3 new-to-gaming players at our local Encounters venue. That may not sound like much, but it's pretty good retention compared to 3e or post-fad classic D&D, and there's also returning 2e players represented, as well as the regulars who blithely made the transition to 5e after starting with 4e. It's not just current players who buy core books (once). New players buy core books. Returning players buy core books.

Maybe, but from the interview it seems current new players are less than a fifth of those who are playing have been playing for less than five years.

What about new players? How many people are choosing fifth edition to dive into the game for the first time?

I don’t know that we’ve dug into that, but I will say that we did look into how long [fifth edition customers] have been playing Dungeons and Dragons, and it’s pretty evenly split between people who have been playing it forever, people who have been playing it 16 to 25 years, 6 to 15 years, and 5 years or less.

Cattering to old foggies like you and me, four fifth of those who are playing, seems like good way to make money.

 

[Kramodlog]

Mearls has posted three times this year, and seven times last year, and none of his posts are related to the business side of the game.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/search.php?searchid=7668287

The good thing is that I didn't say he commented on the business side of the game. That is what is called a strawman.

 

[Hussar]

The good thing is that I didn't say he commented on the business side of the game. That is what is called a strawman.

Yes, because you would obviously be perfectly content to see Mearls appear on EN World regularly and only discuss existing mechanical elements and whatnot of 5e. I'm sure you would be fine with that right?

 

[Imaro]

I always imagined that the 5e development was financed by the sales of the OD, 1E, 2E and 3e reprints.

Good call... I had forgotten about those being published as well...