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.

 

[DaveMage]

I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy 5E much better in CRPG form than TT RPG form because for tabletop I love options. Not enough yet for my taste with the RPG (and apparently not for a long, long time). That said, I think the new ruleset will rock with a CRPG interface.

 

[Kramodlog]

If D&D 5E is a stillbirth, what are all of the other RPGs?

Judging by the support Pathfinder gets, I would stay striving.

Monte Cook games seem to be doing the same.

 

[Kramodlog]

You should include recent pathfinder releases here, so we can understand what those numbers mean.

Paizo has it own online store, something WotC doesn't have. So, Amazon's numbers should only be used to compare D&D to D&D.

ICv2 numbers can be used to compare brick and mortar sells between RPGs.

 

[Kramodlog]

You're cute.

Truth is cuteness, cuteness is truth.

 

[Dire Bare]

I like what I'm reading, with one caveat: There does need to be a psionics product, if only for the support of previous edition campaign conversions. But yeah, I agree that splat needs to have purpose. 75% of all the prestige classes in 3.x were gimmicky, silly, and contrived. There were a few gems, but these were highly thematic and probably best belonged in a campaign book or adventure path.

WotC can give us psionics in several ways that mesh with Stewart's answers in this interview, and what we've heard before from Mearls and others from the team.

The most recent AP is centered around elemental themes and we got the genasi. A future AP could be centered around psionic themes and we'll get the psion.

We might get an Unearthed Arcana article giving us psions and other psionic crunchy stuff.

Or, they might release a "inter-AP" product with all of that psionic goodness inside.

I'd love to have any of those tomorrow, but I won't cry in my beer if it takes a few years. It has in every edition so far, why should 5E be any different? In the meantime, I'll run non-psionic adventures, or use 3rd-party psionics (you know we'll get them), or just make it up myself! 5E is the first edition where I am feeling fairly comfortable making up my own classes, races, and other crunchy bits to add to my game.

 

[ForceUser]

I don't use published adventures at all, so this news is a mixed blessing. It's a bummer, since it sounds like they won't be publishing much that I would buy. On the other hand, I was always annoyed by rules bloat in previous editions, and he's explicitly saying they won't have that. It's looking like my 5E purchases are basically done. Weird.

 

[Trickster Spirit]

The budget for a single AAA-list video game title today is equal to the entire yearly revenue of the D&D pen-and-paper RPG line circa 2006 (going by Ryan Dancey's $30 million annual revenue estimate for the line).

It's still surprising to me just how small the overall RPG revenue stream is. If $30 million was an "average" year for the D&D RPG product line in 2006, that's.....well, even adjusted for a decade of inflation, it's tiny.

My last job was working for a start up software company that had existed for seven or eight years. These guys were small fry, barely even players in their space.......and that company by itself, a single, small, startup software company in Provo, Utah earned more revenue in 2014 than the entire global D&D RPG line did in 2006.

I think I once guesstimated that the entire global, annual revenue stream for RPGs was probably around $100 million. And that's for EVERYONE...... WotC, Paizo, Fantasy Flight, Steve Jackson Games, Green Ronin, Pinnacle Games......that would also include the European markets with Cubicle 7, the "boutique" systems from Germany (Harnmaster, etc.). Everybody. And now I'm starting to think that number might be overly optimistic.

Sure, all of these game companies have properties and revenue streams other than RPGs. It wouldn't surprise in me in the least to hear that Paizo's Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is on target to be a larger share of company revenue than the RPG. Same with Munchkin, for example, for Steve Jackson games (I'd bet a year's salary---with a high level of confidence---that Munchkin nets Steve Jackson games more annual revenue than GURPS).

This is the #1 question the RPG industry needs to figure out----how do we get more people to play our games?

That's an extremely important question to answer, and I'm actually pretty hopeful about the strategy Wizard's come up in response to it. Mike Mearls has talked about it before when the topic of D&D's competition came up - the competition isn't Paizo, or FFG, or Evil Hat, it's instant gratification. Anyone who's actually sat down and played a tabletop RPG and had fun knows what it brings to the table the video games and the like don't - but with a video game you pretty much press play and go, whereas pen and paper games have a much higher barrier to entry (familiarizing yourself with the rules, creating and balancing encounters, having everyone create characters). Even if they might have more fun playing D&D with friends, some folks might just opt to play Dragon Age instead, just because it's so much easier to pick up and play.

Wizards' response has been to come up with a fast-playing edition with streamlined character creation and combat, where you can run through an entire adventure in an hour. I believe the intent was for it to have electronic tools to make things even easier for new players to make their characters, but the whole Morningstar thing collapsed - I wouldn't be surprised if someone's working on them now, and just nothing will be announced until they're ready to release.

That's also what the adventure paths are for. A new player just bought the core books and talked to a group of friends about playing together - what do they do now? Sure, they could create their first adventure from scratch, but it's a lot of work and they might not want to go through with it once they realize what they've gotten themselves into. Or worse, their beginner's inexperience results in a lousy first session and turns everyone off of the game for good.

Instead, Wizards' has a catalog of pre-written campaigns available for them from day one. After they've run through their first couple of APs, they're feeling a bit more confident in their abilities and can see the payoffs of putting a little more effort into creating their own custom adventures.

For people who are complaining that the APs aren't what they're interested in, it's because you're not who those products are aimed at! They're aimed at exactly who they should be - new players who don't know the first thing about creating their own adventures and settings, and are looking for product that's done the heavy lifting for them.

Combine that with a big AAA video game or summer blockbuster with the D&D name on it and you've got a recipe for introducing a lot of new players to the hobby.

 

[Dire Bare]

I don't mean to be a downer here, but are D&D stories really any good? I have only limited experience, but all the pre-made stories I've seen come out of WotC, including lost mine of Phandelver, are cheesy as hell.

In your opinion, perhaps. I not only liked Lost Mines, but was impressed with it. I'm really enjoying my read through of Princes right now. Tyranny of Dragons gets trashed a lot on these forums, but I've seen plenty of glowing reviews and heard some direct (anecdotal) reports from friends that they liked the adventure.

WotC (and TSR before them) has published a LOT of adventures over the years. Some of them were okay, some of them sucked, some of them were incredibly awesome. Which is which is up for debate, as we all have different tastes. But negative folks on teh interwebs sure do like to trash WotC often and loudly, so take all that "WotC makes crappy adventures" talk with a huge grain of salt. Loud does not equal "that's how most fans feel", not by a long shot.

And I feel fairly comfortable that WotC knows that and doesn't give much attention to the whiners. There's nothing they could do to please those folks anyway.

 

[Jester David]

I fully agree. It's all about THEIR story, but they're not giving us the tools for OUR stories.

I'm unsure what else they need to give us for *our* stories.

More class options don't help me tell a story. More monsters don't. The DMG already has more tools for me as a DM than all of 3.0 and 4e (and almost as much as 3.5e).
More campaign settings would if everyone who is a fan of a setting didn't already own the books.


I told years of adventures back in 2e with almost no sourcebooks. Well, I had the Complete Ninja's Handbook and the Complete Book of Humanoids. But my players never used those, so they were pretty much just casual reading.

 

[Halivar]

I told years of adventures back in 2e with almost no sourcebooks. Well, I had the Complete Ninja's Handbook and the Complete Book of Humanoids. But my players never used those, so they were pretty much just casual reading.

Well, it's also pretty hard to use the Complete Ninja's Handbook when it keeps disappearing.