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]

Honestly I'm not sure how we can get that estimate period... but hey everyone else is throwing out numbers and conjecture, so why not join in??

Sure!

I strongly suspect a crack team of adventurers was gathered, a worm hole to an alternative Earth was opened, the adventurers leaped through the portal, stole the code from alternate earth's Wizards of SeaTac headquarters (where they had already developed the system using an alternate form of credits that has no good translation to dollars) and re-opened the portal to leap back to our earth. They then uploaded the stolen data, and spent a small sum learning how to use it and tweak it to fit our earths needs.

So DDI was practically free! But, Mike Mearls was shot in the process. He lived, but was pissed. So as a reward, they put him in charge of 5e.

That's my conjecture.

 

[Imaro]

Sure!

I strongly suspect a crack team of adventurers was gathered, a worm hole to an alternative Earth was opened, the adventurers leaped through the portal, stole the code from alternate earth's Wizards of SeaTac headquarters (where they had already developed the system using an alternate form of credits that has no good translation to dollars) and re-opened the portal to leap back to our earth. They then uploaded the stolen data, and spent a small sum learning how to use it and tweak it to fit our earths needs.

So DDI was practically free! But, Mike Mearls was shot in the process. He lived, but was pissed. So as a reward, they put him in charge of 5e.

That's my conjecture.

But... there's no numbers, I said numbers and conjecture you've got the one down but not the other.

 

[Mistwell]

But... there's no numbers, I said numbers and conjecture you've got the one down but not the other.

Wizards of SeaTac spent 18,346.59 Kunukoole credits.

 

[TBeholder]

We are story, story, story. The story drives everything.

Thanks for linking this. Nothing unexpected, but it does confirm a lot.

Yes, it's very noticeable.
The current approach is that The Big Thing Of The Month drops in the middle and everything is about it. Giant, dragons, copycats, whatnot.
If you don't visit Candlekeep, FR fans have a term for this, for at least two edition now: "Realms Shaking Event". And most despised RSE even before RSE was adapted as a form of marketing milking maneuver. Surprise, surprise - people don't like when someone takes them for dumb sheep and tries to fleece, nor when someone tries to squeeze money for trying to bury what they like under trash.

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.

I am calling chicken-and-egg here. If they don't sell anything else, why anyone would buy anything else?
Drizzt? That one is dead by now. Or maybe undead. Either way, they poisoned this cash cow too, and artificially kept it alive for years. Salvatore himself was clearly tired of it long ago, and the fans are moving on. If they expect Twilight crowd to run in, this doesn't seem to happen.
Old FR fans? Yeah, sure, we are going to jump on it. Like we jumped on "OMG GLOWING TATTOOS" in 4e.

 

[Dausuul]

Animate thread: Cast!

But actually, this is a good one to revive. How does it look (aside from the fungus and the rot and the groan of "BRRRRAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNSSSSS") after a year and a half?

Sword Coast Legends is... uh... not a feather in WotC's cap any more (more of a big ol' splotch of tar), and there has been no triple-A computer RPG. The missing piece remains missing. The movie is still in the works, and it'll come out eventually, and I'm sure it'll be every bit as good as you'd expect a movie scripted by the "Wrath of the Titans" author to be. The big tie-in push has yet to bear fruit.

As for the game itself, they have stuck with their "two stories a year" plan, but they seem to have woken up to the fact that we homebrewers were not getting much out of that plan; hence Volo's and the upcoming book-that-ABSOLUTELY-IS-NOT-a-Player's-Handbook-2.

All in all, I'd say Stewart's interview doesn't come off very well today. Yes, 5E was a tremendous smashing success, but not because of the brand or the stories or the tie-ins. It was a success because they built a damn good game. Now they are faced with the same challenge as every edition before them: How do you keep selling books once everyone has the new PHB? And they are quietly edging back toward the one solution that works: Splatbooks.

To be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. D&D no longer has to support close to 100 full-time employees (more like 15-20), so they can afford to focus on quality. They could do, say, two adventure arcs, one player book, and one DM/monster book a year, well into the 2020s, and release 6E after a solid run of 12-15 years.

But the course 5E is following does not look much like the vision Stewart had for it.

 

[gyor]

"the upcoming book-that-ABSOLUTELY-IS-NOT-a-Player's-Handbook-2"

The above made me laugh.


Honestly all all I want now is a FRCG with the deities and details they left out of the SCAG ( to be fair my issue with the SCAG is that it wasn't the FRCG which should have come out first).

Outside of FRCG I don't care what they produce, odds are I'm not interested any of it until I get a FRCG, I have my +1 if I decide to do my AL character that I had planned, so I don't really need anything else, except FRCG. Honestly it needs only a list of deity domains for gods like Lurue, Mulhorandi Pantheon (including Sharess), Nobian, Zehir, Dragon Pantheon, ect...

Like seriously we don't even have something as a full detailed map of the whole Faerun!

So I'm kind of getting frustrated. I don't give fig about any other D&D books until they do a FRCG and full proper map of Faerun.

 

[Dire Bare]

Animate thread: Cast!

But actually, this is a good one to revive. How does it look (aside from the fungus and the rot and the groan of "BRRRRAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNSSSSS") after a year and a half?

Sword Coast Legends is... uh... not a feather in WotC's cap any more (more of a big ol' splotch of tar), and there has been no triple-A computer RPG. The missing piece remains missing. The movie is still in the works, and it'll come out eventually, and I'm sure it'll be every bit as good as you'd expect a movie scripted by the "Wrath of the Titans" author to be. The big tie-in push has yet to bear fruit.

As for the game itself, they have stuck with their "two stories a year" plan, but they seem to have woken up to the fact that we homebrewers were not getting much out of that plan; hence Volo's and the upcoming book-that-ABSOLUTELY-IS-NOT-a-Player's-Handbook-2.

All in all, I'd say Stewart's interview doesn't come off very well today. Yes, 5E was a tremendous smashing success, but not because of the brand or the stories or the tie-ins. It was a success because they built a damn good game. Now they are faced with the same challenge as every edition before them: How do you keep selling books once everyone has the new PHB? And they are quietly edging back toward the one solution that works: Splatbooks.

To be clear, I don't think this is a bad thing. D&D no longer has to support close to 100 full-time employees (more like 15-20), so they can afford to focus on quality. They could do, say, two adventure arcs, one player book, and one DM/monster book a year, well into the 2020s, and release 6E after a solid run of 12-15 years.

But the course 5E is following does not look much like the vision Stewart had for it.

I disagree. Despite the interview in the OP being over a year old, I think it holds up rather well to explain WotC's approach to 5th Edition D&D. You may not like it, but it's working just fine for them.

No "AAA" video game title yet? True. But making a video game "hit" is harder than most armchair quarterbacks in the fandom would like to believe. And just because we haven't seen a blockbuster title announced, doesn't mean it isn't in the works. And both "Neverwinter" and "Sword Coast Legends" have active player bases that are keeping both games alive, and making money.

No movie yet? Well, just like video games, making good movies takes time. Especially when the licensing rights are tied up and in dispute between companies. But again, this is very much still on the agenda. And don't judge a movie by it's scriptwriter, as the shooting script often varies widely from the initial draft (and has many hands polishing it). Ultimately, while there are many factors that make a movie "good", the director is the "controlling artist" on a film. Last news I heard is that Rob Letterman is attached to direct (although, I haven't seen any confirmation), but he might not get you all that excited either. He's mostly known for just-above-average animated movies so far. Unfortunately D&D is not the kind of property (yet!) that can attract more A-list directors.

Without that blockbuster film and AAA video game title out in the wilds yet, that doesn't change anything about WotC's management of D&D. They know that there is more money (potentially) in movies and video games than there is in tabletop RPGs, and so they are smartly focusing effort there. Thankfully, they are doing so without neglecting the game itself.

Without that eye on movies and video games, would WotC be pursuing a similar release schedule as they are now? IMO, yes, they would be. The slower release schedule, with a focus on story over crunch, has been working very well for them so far, just for the game itself. And there really hasn't been any communication from WotC that they are changing their overall plan, although I'm sure they have been adjusting things as they go along (note how the support for each adventure path has been different). They may be working on what some are calling the "Big Book of Crunch", but they remain adamant they aren't doing a "Player's Handbook 2" and we don't really know what format this future release might take. Will it be connected to story? Even if it isn't, if it is independent of any ongoing story arcs, it's hardly a radical departure and doesn't really go against what WotC's been telling us over the past few years.

TLDR; Crowing about WotC coming to their senses and moving away from the slow release and focus on story is more than a bit premature.

 

[Dire Bare]

Honestly all all I want now is a FRCG with the deities and details they left out of the SCAG ( to be fair my issue with the SCAG is that it wasn't the FRCG which should have come out first).

Outside of FRCG I don't care what they produce, odds are I'm not interested any of it until I get a FRCG, I have my +1 if I decide to do my AL character that I had planned, so I don't really need anything else, except FRCG. Honestly it needs only a list of deity domains for gods like Lurue, Mulhorandi Pantheon (including Sharess), Nobian, Zehir, Dragon Pantheon, ect...

Like seriously we don't even have something as a full detailed map of the whole Faerun!

So I'm kind of getting frustrated. I don't give fig about any other D&D books until they do a FRCG and full proper map of Faerun.

Don't hold your breath.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I am much more interested in episodic sandbox adventures than long drawn out adventure paths. This "story, story, story" (.... someone else's story) approach by Wotc only turns me off 5e more.

 

[Morrus]

"the upcoming book-that-ABSOLUTELY-IS-NOT-a-Player's-Handbook-2"

The above made me laugh.


Honestly all all I want now is a FRCG with the deities and details they left out of the SCAG ( to be fair my issue with the SCAG is that it wasn't the FRCG which should have come out first).

Outside of FRCG I don't care what they produce, odds are I'm not interested any of it until I get a FRCG, I have my +1 if I decide to do my AL character that I had planned, so I don't really need anything else, except FRCG. Honestly it needs only a list of deity domains for gods like Lurue, Mulhorandi Pantheon (including Sharess), Nobian, Zehir, Dragon Pantheon, ect...

Like seriously we don't even have something as a full detailed map of the whole Faerun!

So I'm kind of getting frustrated. I don't give fig about any other D&D books until they do a FRCG and full proper map of Faerun.

I'm the exact opposite. That's the very last book I want.