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.

 

[Dire Bare]

Failure depends upon the criteria imposed...

When corporate explicitly expects being #1, and you come in #2, you have still failed, even if you make money, because the board is going to see the VP saying the team failed to meet expectations.

HasBro expected D&D to remain #1 in the market. It failed to do so.

Not a bad game. Not a total failure as a game (as the psychotic support for it shows), but it was a failure from the corporate view.

To fail or succeed on a task, you must certainly define the task first. And, of course, there can be varying degrees of failure, and varying degrees of success. But I still think you are playing semantics with the word "failure". Or at best, you are a "glass-half-empty" kinda fellow and define something less than a total long-lasting success as a "failure".

You have exactly zero idea of what WotC's internal goals for D&D are, for any edition. You cannot say, and be taken seriously, that 4E failed WotC/Hasbro's expectations, because you do not know. If you did know, you would be one of those folks bound by a ND agreement (non-disclosure).

All of the information that we have gotten from various employees of WotC has told us that 4E was indeed a success. We don't know the specific criteria or sales goal that WotC might have had with 4E, but there have been many statements made letting us know that 4E did very well. Obviously, not well enough to prevent the edition wars and to continue as the current edition of D&D. But, by that metric, all prior editions of D&D are also failures.

 

[Dire Bare]

Use them? No particular need.
Be aware of them? the need is very real.

For fans of a certain game, let's say D&D , it is absolutely NOT essential that we be aware or educated on the business behind our favorite hobby. Having an INTEREST in that type of information is understandable, but is not necessary.

Obviously, a lot of us are interested and find this sort of discussion fascinating, and that's awesome. But there are plenty of D&D players (I'd say the majority) who could care less and their D&D games are not damaged by the lack of interest and knowledge of the business of D&D.

For it to matter, we would have to be able to DO something with the knowledge gleaned from tweets and message board posts. And we can do . . . nothing with this info. We can complain and kvetch all we want, we can even participate in marketing surveys and such, but we cannot affect the business side of D&D unless we actually got a job at WotC (and a managerial one at that). We can affect the rules and direction the game itself might go in IF WotC allows us to (which they have for 5E), but that's about it.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not sure that should be all that much harder to code. All you'd have to do is allow customization by DM input, that input is then used to calculate an estimated CR, and let the DM override that, if desired, with the CR he wants to apply for the final output.

Honestly I feel like this should have been a feature of a 4e monster builder as well... since alot of DM's like to house rule/mod.

 

[pemerton]

When determining whether something was a success... I think start up costs would matter alot

Yes. But they are not relevant to determining what revenue might have financed a 2 year development period for 5e. (Unless the start-up money was borrowed, and the revenue was discharging a loan. That seems unlikely in this case.)

Honestly, your estimate of $100,000 seems low to me (I have experience with enterprise level business apps, so admittedly my view could be skewed towards the high side for an app like this)...but then again my original point was that we actually don't know any of this... I mean it's easy enough to just throw out numbers but what are the real basis for them?

Well, my basis was a half-time salary (call it in the neighbourhood of $50,000 to $75,000) plus some hardware outlay and electricity. These are all conjecture, especially (in my case) the latter two, which is why I invited correction from others.

 

[Imaro]

Yes. But they are not relevant to determining what revenue might have financed a 2 year development period for 5e. (Unless the start-up money was borrowed, and the revenue was discharging a loan. That seems unlikely in this case.)

Okay let me turn this around for a minute... do you believe that none of the money from the boardgames, novels, MMOrpg's, videogames, comics, etc... went towards funding 5e? If not I again think it's erroneous to make a statement along the lines of 4e financed 5e... because it didn't.

 

[aramis erak]

You have exactly zero idea of what WotC's internal goals for D&D are, for any edition. You cannot say, and be taken seriously, that 4E failed WotC/Hasbro's expectations, because you do not know. If you did know, you would be one of those folks bound by a ND agreement (non-disclosure).

Wrong. Several wizards insiders have stated the various corporate goals. $50M and retention of the top slot in the industry have both been stated as goals of the D&D team for the 4E era by members of the development teams.

 

[Dire Bare]

Wrong. Several wizards insiders have stated the various corporate goals. $50M and retention of the top slot in the industry have both been stated as goals of the D&D team for the 4E era by members of the development teams.

Sorry, but I still feel you're essentially making stuff up. I've heard the $50 mil bandied about . . . was that $50 per year? Per quarter? Per edition? And how close did 4E come to hitting that goal? Did it make it, did it fall short? By how much? YOU DON'T KNOW.

I've also heard the "D&D needs to be #1" also thrown around. Did WotC/Hasbro expect D&D to be #1 all 12 months of the year? Did WotC expect D&D to be #1 when they weren't really publishing any products? I have my own guesses, but YOU DON'T KNOW. And really, D&D was only NOT #1 when there was no edition being supported in the dry years between 4E and 5E. When 4E was in full swing, D&D was #1. Now that 5E is in full swing, D&D is #1 again.

There is NO evidence that WotC/Hasbro has ever considered 4E a failure. None. They might have! I doubt it personally, but WE DON'T KNOW. Mearls knows, but he won't tell us, neither should he.

 

[Shasarak]

If DnD made $50 million per year then it would have to be the number one RPG.

 

[Kramodlog]

Huh? If WotC has decided that the way forward is not with 4e, and they are devoting their team to developing 5e, (i) why would they publish books for a system which they've decided won't make a commercially adequate return, and (ii) who would write them?

(i)Because that is how they did it for all editions. Work on 4e or at least the edition that came after 3.5 started in 2005. 3.5, an edition that WotC decided wasn't the way forward, was published until 2007, if I remember correctly. Not too shabby for an edition that might be losing money. (ii) 3.5 was written by its own designers (Plot twist! Not)! Althought at the very end folks from Paizo helped with some books, but not all.

Of course, if 4e can't finance 5e's R&D and is just a lost, they will stop developing 4e. Which mean you argument that 4e financed the R&D of 5e is moot.

 

[Kramodlog]

If DnD made $50 million per year then it would have to be the number one RPG.

D&D the brand or the RPG? What I got from Ryan Dancey is that D&D the brand was supposed to make 50 millions dollars. Not just the RPG. And you know, Nathan Stewart told us D&D ain't an RPG anymore.

50 million dollars just from the RPG is unlikely. Since we know from ICv2 that the RPG industry was 15 millions dollars in 2013 (just from brick and mortar sells or also online sells that is not clear), it is doubtful the 50 millions came from just the RPG. Of course, in 2013 D&D wasn't in print at the time and the last edition was unpopular.

At the end of 2014, ICv2 said the market of RPGs was getting steam. Just when D&D saw the light of day again. So that 15 million might just pick up steam. At least momentarely.