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.

 

[Mistwell]

Nevermind...no point in furthering a series of meaningless arguments that are off topic.

 

[TwoSix]

With so many fans of all four of those different games, all of which kept the D&D department of Wizards of the Coast going and not being shut down... why anyone would consider any of them a "failure" is beyond me. But obviously, their metrics for what they consider a success to be different than mine. I'd just love it if the fact that the person HATED a particular game wasn't so prevalent in their overall claims of whether it was a "failure".

I think it's because the crux of the issue has nothing to do with an objective measurement of success or failure. What the underlying question is "Did the Edition War hasten the termination of 4e?" Was 4e's termination the inevitable result of corporate decisions, or was the negative reception broad enough in base that the development was impacted by that reception? Answering that question would give a "win" to one side or the other, which is why this question continues to be raised 7 years after 4e's release.

 

[houser2112]

Who I'd really would love to see posting about this topic are the people who played and enjoyed 4E as a game but still consider 4E a failure (in either design or financial concerns)... and the people who didn't like 4E as a game and wouldn't play it, but also think it successfully achieved what it set out to do.

Because everyone else who comments always seem to be the people who think 4E was great and was a success, or the people who hated 4E, don't think it was "D&D", and was a complete failure of a game. And in both cases their views cannot be taken completely objectively.

For me personally... I look at all four recent games (3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder & 4E, of which I played three of them) and see success. Both creatively *and* financially. All four of these games were popular with a segment of the roleplaying populace, and they all brought new players and returning players to the game. None of them were met with 100% satisfaction, but none of them were hated by all of the roleplaying population either. And for the type of game they were trying to design, I can see what they were aiming for and believe they succeeded in their design goals for the most part. And as far as financially, I consider being able to produce a product that allows you to pay your staff and keep the lights on so that you can then produce MORE product to be a success. Because that then allows you to pay your staff again and keep the lights on again, so you can then produce more product again... and so on and so on. That's what a company does. And all of those games allowed WotC (and the D&D department) to do that.

With so many fans of all four of those different games, all of which kept the D&D department of Wizards of the Coast going and not being shut down... why anyone would consider any of them a "failure" is beyond me. But obviously, their metrics for what they consider a success to be different than mine. I'd just love it if the fact that the person HATED a particular game wasn't so prevalent in their overall claims of whether it was a "failure".

I don't fit neatly into either of the categories you are referring to, but I'll comment anyway. While I do fall into the "4E was not D&D" bucket, to say that I hated it would be too strong. I was disappointed that they were no longer making 3.x products, since I loved that game. I looked at the PH while in a Barnes & Noble, and decided it wasn't what I was looking for, and put it down. If I was invited to play it, I'd probably try it, but it wasn't compelling enough to seek a group on my own.

As to whether it was a success? Financially, I think it was, merely by the fact that D&D is still a thing today. If 4E was an abject failure, I don't think Hasbro would have spent any money creating 5E, they would have sold it off or mothballed it. Creatively, I think it was successful too, if their goal was to create a game where balance reigned supreme. However, I think underestimated the backlash that would result from the slaughtering of so many sacred cows at once.

The design of 5E, being so melting pot-ish, suggests to me that 4E failed at something, though. 3E failed to retain the grognards, but they were relatively quiet. WotC turned off a lot more people at launch (due to the game itself, and their attitude toward legacy gamers), and further turned off a lot of people that actually liked the game with Essentials (I know at least one group that dropped 4E due to it). 5E is trying (and succeeding, from what I can tell) to bring them all back.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Who I'd really would love to see posting about this topic are the people who played and enjoyed 4E as a game but still consider 4E a failure (in either design or financial concerns)... and the people who didn't like 4E as a game and wouldn't play it, but also think it successfully achieved what it set out to do.

Because everyone else who comments always seem to be the people who think 4E was great and was a success, or the people who hated 4E, don't think it was "D&D", and was a complete failure of a game. And in both cases their views cannot be taken completely objectively.

snip.....

Ok I will give it a go. I really liked 4e and still do. Personally for me its major flaw is that at the table it provides so many options many players fall into options anxiety and dither endlessly over the optimal move. Now I liked it for the ease of DMing and I think that this was a desgn goal but in hindsight I think 4e was meant to be the online game. Played on a VTT with a lot of automation to remove the fiddly bits.
I think it was meant to mesh with Gleemax to provide a strong online experience and bring back players that no longer played due to time constraints or the fact that the old college gang were scattered to the four winds.
Therefore the strategy at conception (IMHO and all that) died when the plug was puled on the Gleemax servers and the failure to deliver the initial VTT.
Everything after that was remedial action. That was the $50million bet.

 

[Iosue]

The $50 million thing gets somewhat overblown. Sure, the 4e pitch was a path to that, but I think it was fairly obvious fairly soon that it wasn't going to do that. The Digital Initiative was a key part of the strategy, but from early on it was clear that it was not going to be as planned. Not getting the $50 million didn't kill 4e; it just maintained the status quo for the game (while necessitating staffing cuts).

IMO, two things, somewhat related, led to 4e's replacement with 5e. The first was 2014. I think it can be assumed that something big was going to happen that year, be it a clear 4.5, or 5e. The second was that, regardless of how well it was selling, they found that they were not getting the new players they wanted. Mearls has mentioned how their starter sets always sold well, but they didn't see people moving on to the full game. Essentials was one crack at this problem, and one that IMO strongly influenced 5e's approach to character class complexity.

The only thing Edition Wars influenced was how the transition was done, i.e., the open playtest. Rather than have the designers design in an ivory tower and then be surprised by public reaction, they could get immediate feedback on their design choices. And sure, doing a public playtest meant 4e going dark early. But, as I suggested earlier they were only able to do that because DDI provided steady revenue. Not because it literally paid for the D&D department's salaries and expenses, but because it let WotC/Hasbro leave the team to its own devices, secure that it was bringing in revenue, even if its only new products were limited edition premium reprints.

 

[Larac]

I think 4e would still be strong today, if the VTT had been created and it worked just decently.

4e was built to push that and we all know what happened, 5e is paying for those sins still today.

Hasbro does not care about you one bit, only profit. No building the community, no making great stuff, just Profit.
If that makes profit they will do it, if not it is dropped by a person who gets paid to kill things off if the profit is not high enough, it can be making money but they have a % and if it falls under that it is axed.

Then they sit on the rights to have no competition.
They are far from the worst but they are what they are.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As to whether it was a success? Financially, I think it was, merely by the fact that D&D is still a thing today. If 4E was an abject failure, I don't think Hasbro would have spent any money creating 5E, they would have sold it off or mothballed it. Creatively, I think it was successful too, if their goal was to create a game where balance reigned supreme. However, I think underestimated the backlash that would result from the slaughtering of so many sacred cows at once.

I think "underestimated the backlash" is a very fair and even-handed statement of point. Yes, the changes wrought with the new edition did result in a backlash throughout a segment of the D&D populace, and the extent of the backlash was probably unforeseen (since in any creative endeavor you always think you are doing something really good and you just hope other people like it.) But it also doesn't put any blame on them for not being able to see into the future, nor treat them like idiots or bad business people for trying to evolve the 3E game in a manner that it seemed many people were already playing it (minis and maps). The fact that it did alienate a larger segment of the D&D populace than they probably expected is very unfortunate, and was a lesson that they had to learn the hard way.

But in the end... the lessons learned about game design with 4E I believe have made 5E a better game. And for that, I'm very thankful.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Ok I will give it a go. I really liked 4e and still do. Personally for me its major flaw is that at the table it provides so many options many players fall into options anxiety and dither endlessly over the optimal move. Now I liked it for the ease of DMing and I think that this was a desgn goal but in hindsight I think 4e was meant to be the online game. Played on a VTT with a lot of automation to remove the fiddly bits.
I think it was meant to mesh with Gleemax to provide a strong online experience and bring back players that no longer played due to time constraints or the fact that the old college gang were scattered to the four winds.
Therefore the strategy at conception (IMHO and all that) died when the plug was puled on the Gleemax servers and the failure to deliver the initial VTT.

I definitely agree that one of the strengths of the 4E design was the easier ability to port the game to the virtual tabletop, but I wouldn't wipe away the sales of the D&D pre-painted miniatures, poster maps, and Dungeon Tiles for use at the face-to-face table as inconsequential though. I think the money that could be brought in from all four (minis, maps, tiles, VTT) all had a hand in spearheading 3E's miniatures evolution towards what 4E became. But then losing one of those four so early in the game's lifespan probably did reduce the game's ceiling ultimately. I think that's fair.

 

[Kramodlog]

Seriously, this makes no sense.

You've said before that you refuse to see it. This is just a continuation of this.

If you've decided to not publish for an edition, and have announced a two-year public playtest for a new edition, why would you devote design resources to publishing splatbooks for the edition you're abandoning?

Why did Paizo continue to publish 3.5 compatible books when it was doing its playtest for 3.75 (Pathfinder)?

Simple answers are often the best: *drumroll* it was profitable.

DDI was generating revenue for the two years that 5e was in development.

Revenues sure, but profits? We do not know. Once DDI covered its cost, what was left? We do not know. Saying it financed 5e's R&D is just an unsubstantiated claim.

I don't know how big the 5e development team was; I don't know what the other revenues during that period were. Any rational and/or informed conjecture would be welcome.

What is rational conjecture is that 4e wasn't a success financially and this is why it was so short lived and D&D went on a 2 years hiatus. Developing 5e was a risk, a gamble taken by WotC, as Jeremy Crawford said. Because exects didn't see the brand as profitable and needed Mearls to convince them.

 

[aramis erak]

I definitely agree that one of the strengths of the 4E design was the easier ability to port the game to the virtual tabletop, but I wouldn't wipe away the sales of the D&D pre-painted miniatures, poster maps, and Dungeon Tiles for use at the face-to-face table as inconsequential though. I think the money that could be brought in from all four (minis, maps, tiles, VTT) all had a hand in spearheading 3E's miniatures evolution towards what 4E became. But then losing one of those four so early in the game's lifespan probably did reduce the game's ceiling ultimately. I think that's fair.

If one had the digital tools, 4E was a brilliant game - but they flubbed the tools. It was a lesson learned the hard way by WotC.

The 4E Encounters also had a perception problem: tactical-play-only. (It wasn't supposed to be, but it ended up looking that way.)

Both of which seem to have shaped 5E quite strongly. The Big Story emphasis across 3 games (NWN, Attack Wing, and D&D)... It's got a reason to buy new stuff without forcing new core purchases. It's a reaction to the corporate-side perception of failure for the D&D brand during the 4E era.

Remember: It's not just got to be profitable - it's got to be profitable enough. Apparently, since 5E's launch, D&D as a brand is doing so.