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.

 

[pemerton]

Why can't WoTC do map packs also then? In the back of PoA, they give examples on how to convert that story to other settings in the D&D multi-verse. Cool. So I ask a 14 year-old first time DM ..... where is the Cairn Hills in Greyhawk. Have you ever heard of Hommlet? At least give us map packs ...... please? At least we'd know where these places are.

This came up in another of these complaint threads.

If you go to D&D classics, you can buy at least 3 versions of GH: original boxed set, From the Ashes boxed set or late-2nd ed "The Adventure Begins". Any of these will have the maps you are looking for.

A 14-year-old 1st time GM who (for whatever reason) has heard of GH and wants to set PotA in it will probably be able to work this out. (And conversely, if s/he's never heard of GH and doesn't know about D&D Classics, why would s/he want to set PotA in the Cairn Hills?)

it's not MY fault that sales started dropping off at the tail-end of 3.5 (some of those books felt like they weren't even playtested.) It's not my fault that 4th Edition didn't make Hasbro the kind of money Hasbro was hoping to see. It's not my fault that Pathfinder was such a success. Some of the things that WoTC is doing, it feels like I'm the one being punished for not supporting 4th like I did the previous editions to it.

This makes no real sense to me - it would be like 4e fans complainging that we are being "punished" although it was the sales of 4e books and DDI subscriptions than financed the development of 5e.

WotC is a commercial publisher and manager of intellectual property. They're not a charity. They don't owe duties to anyone to publish particular books about particular things. If they think a book is a good commercial prospect, they will publish it. Otherwise they won't. It has nothing to do with "fault" or "punishment".

as time has marched on and Hasbro has impressed its culture upon WotC, the company seems to be pretty different. I think they've lost a lot of their agility and vision - would WotC be able to stick its neck out for TSR now? I doubt it. Under Hasbro's control, rather than balancing serving the hobby with running a business, they're serving the shareholders who care little for hobby table-top gaming.

I really don't get this.

Between 2008 and 2011, I bought over A$1000 worth of 4e publications from WotC. I'm a RPG hobbyist, and that served me. Over the past fortnight I have accessed the free Rules Compendium index for 4e material on WotC's website, and have downloaded a free 5e PDF with material from PotA. This is service to me.

Maybe WotC is not offering for sale stuff that you want to buy. That doesn't mean it's not serving the hobby! That just means that there's stuff you want to buy that it's not offering. Buy it from someone else, then - or, if no one is offering it for sale, maybe that says something about it's commercial viability.

D&D is a product. As a consumer, I think it's very reasonable to expect a certain level of service or content from a product.

Unless you are a DDI subscriber, there is no element of "service" involved in the sale of D&D. It is a series of books - you got what you paid for when you took it home from the shop! As to the "certain level of content", unless there was a printing error in your copy, the words on the pages are the content that you paid for.

WotC has no duty to anyone to publish further material. It's not a charity. No one has contracted with it to do so. It has not engaged in conduct giving rise to an estoppel.

If you like the stuff they write, then of course you want them to keep writing new stuff for you to buy. If they choose not to, that might be a disappointment. But they are not wronging you. Entertainment product lines - books, comics, TV shows, movies, etc - change direction, suffer cancellation, change their release schedules, etc, all the time. That's the nature of commercial enterprise.

Paizo released more stuff after 10 months. PF was being supported.

As [MENTION=16169]DongMaster[/MENTION] posted, Paizo is not a charity either. They published books that they believed would make them a profit - they didn't "support" their game out of a sense of duty!

If WotC take a different view about what is the best commercial strategy for D&D, that's their prerogative.

Even if the focus is on the hobby rather than commerce, I don't know of any evidence that Paizo's rate of publication makes PF the better game, or the more popular game, or the more played game, than D&D 5e.

Liking 5e now doesn't mean you won't get tired of it after a year or two because it became repetitive because of lack of new content.

WotC has already released new content (UA, PotA PDF). Maybe over the next year or two they will release even more new content. Do we have any evidence that purchase and/or play of 5e is slowing because of the pace of release of new content?

 

[pemerton]

I think what Mark is describing the classic Railroad/Sandbox scenario; who's the ultimate director of the narrative?

Not quite.

It may be what he calls story is actually story elements, which include setting, NPCs, etc., and that he is describing that as a story when it might be more precisely described as a potential-story-in-the-making. If what he actually is meaning is that he has a plotted story through which he guides player (and their character) scene by scene, then what he is describing is a very restrictive type of roleplaying game wherein the players have very little agency. Even so, despite how much of the story in such games is predetermined, if the game includes random aspects like dice, then the story can still only be told after the game has been played. If the players have control beyond their character over the non-PC story elements, then he is describing either a Storytelling Game or, at the least, an RPG with storytelling game elements.

What Mark CMG is doing is arguing that RPGs in which the GM exercises his/her power of introducing fictional content in response to player signals/cues, are not actually RPGs.

Although there is equivocation on the word "control", because Mark CMG does not seem to distinguish between a player making a request to a GM (expressly or by implication) to include something, and the player making a move within the game that generates content in a manner that does not model causal powers enjoyed, in the gameworld, by the player's PC.

Suppose, in a classic D&D game, a player says to the GM "I'd like to hire a fighter henchman", and then declares that his/her PC is off to the local tavern. In response to this statement of desire + action declaration, the GM responds "At the tavern, you see what looks like a mercenary who hasn't seen a payday for awhile." The player has his/her PC strike up a conversation, and it turns out that this NPC is a fighter just waiting to be hired as a henchman. (Does the PC in question end up hiring the NPC? That is a further question, which turns on how the table in question handles reaction rolls and social action resolution more broadly. From the little episode of play that I've described we can't tell what the outcome was or might be.)

That is how most of the games that Mark CMG labels "storygames" actually work, only the technique is generalised across the whole of play, and particularly to the introduction of antagonistic as well as sympathetic NPCs. And - as the example shows - this sort of stuff has had the potential to be part of D&D since day one, and I believe actually has been part of D&D (and other RPG play) since at least day two: GMs have followed their players' cues in deciding what story elements to introduce into the game. GMs have written up heist scenarios for all-thief parties; written in necromancers to be antagonists of PC paladins; written in targets for PC assassins to spy upon or assassinate; etc.

Not every RPG is run in this style, but that doesn't make running a game in this style not an RPG.

Basically, my question when it comes to story is, to what degree do I, as DM, know what ill happen in a particular session, and indeed in future sessions?

The more I know and can accurately predict, the more that session of play is intertwined with a story as a through-line.

The less I know and can predict, the more that story is a by-product of that session of play.

Most of the RPGs that Mark CMG labels "storygames" fit into your second rather than first category. They were designed as reactions to the sort of railroading (as those designers and RPGers would see it) that is implicit in your first scenario.

What distinguishes a so-called "storygame" from (say) Keep on the Borderlands run Gygax-style is that the mechanics of (1) PC build and (2) action declaration and resolution are designed to ensure that the story which is a by-product will be (a) a more-or-less guaranteed by-product, ajnd (b) will exhibit the traits of a story in the literary sense (ie rising action, crisis, satisfaction or thwarting of dramatic need, etc).

A very simple example on the PC build side would be to say "Every player, when building his/her PC, must state one loyalty for that PC (be it a person, a place, a thing, etc)". This is what I did at the start of my 4e game. I then introduced story elements into the game which put those loyalties under pressure.

A simple example on the action resolution side is - once an action declaration has been permissibly made - to only call for checks when an action declaration is a response to that sort of pressure - otherwise you just say "yes", the PC (and player) gets what s/he wants, and the game moves on fairly quickly until a moment of pressure is reached.

The first version of D&D that I'm aware of that incorporated this sort of PC-build element was Oriental Adventures. I'm sure that the designer of OA wasn't the first RPG player or designer to think of it, though! It probably goes back at least to Runequest and the Gloranthan cults.

I think the development of the relevant techniques on the action resolution side of things came later in RPG design (Over the Edge, for instance, has the PC-side stuff but not really the action resolution side stuff). Before these sorts of techniques were developed, GM fudging and backstory manipulation tended to be the order of the day, but that tends to undermine the goal of your second approach and push it back to your first approach - which, from the play approach I'm describing here is a collapse back into railroading.

 

[Imaro]

T
This makes no real sense to me - it would be like 4e fans complainging that we are being "punished" although it was the sales of 4e books and DDI subscriptions than financed the development of 5e.

Any actual data, comments or proof whatsoever to back up this assertion?

 

[Mark CMG]

What Mark CMG is doing is arguing that RPGs in which the GM exercises his/her power of introducing fictional content in response to player signals/cues, are not actually RPGs.

Nope. GMs in a Roleplaying Game respond to players actions all the time by telling them the consequences of their actions and describing to them more information based on what the characters can access. GMs often have to run their games on the fly and introduce story elements (setting details, NPCs, etc.) based on their own idea of their setting bible consistent with what they have previously determined and/or created. No GM can be expected to have every speck of dust detailed in advance but they do tend to have some idea of what details would be consistent with their setting concept overall. The rest of your post (here and in previous times you've quoted me) is based on a faulty assumption and misreading of what I have said in this thread and previously. You probably should just point to what I have posted rather than paraphrase your misinterpretations of my posts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't think any of us can really know what the cash flow situation is at WoTC. It certainly is likely the revenue from 4e books and DDI went toward 5E but honestly who knows. That money might have also dried up by the time they had to invest in 5E (and could have come from other sources). Really I haven't got a clue here and I doubt WotC will release that information any time soon. At the very least though Pemerton is on solid ground in that 5E was at the very least going to indirectly benefit from 4S sales.

 

[pemerton]

Any actual data, comments or proof whatsoever to back up this assertion?

My reasoning relies on two premises:

(1) I don't think the D&D group was kept on as a charity case;

(2) Because that's what they were selling in those two years (plus the re-releases of the AD&D and 3E rulebooks).

I guess it's possible they made the bulk of their income from those re-releases rather than DDI income, but that seems unlikely to me.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think any of us can really know what the cash flow situation is at WoTC.

I don't know, in the sense that I haven't seen their accounts.

But would WotC allow a unit to spend two years developing a product if their previous project was such a failure that it doesn't provide enough revenue to support the development? Particularly when a big part of that previous project was supposed to be a subscription revenue stream (ie DDI)?

I mean, stranger things have happened, so it's possible, but it doesn't strike me as very probable.

 

[Imaro]

I don't think any of us can really know what the cash flow situation is at WoTC. It certainly is likely the revenue from 4e books and DDI went toward 5E but honestly who knows. That money might have also dried up by the time they had to invest in 5E (and could have come from other sources). Really I haven't got a clue here and I doubt WotC will release that information any time soon. At the very least though Pemerton is on solid ground in that 5E was at the very least going to indirectly benefit from 4S sales.

Well this was the second or third time I'd heard that assertion (or a similar one) from a fan of 4e so I was curious to see if there was any actual evidence to back it up. I would also say that benefiting from the sales of 4e is quite the different claim from 4e having financed it's development.

I mean I know we tend to focus on the rolelplaying component of WoTC/D&D... but they also produce D&D boardgames, have 2 D&D MMORPG's (one of which was just released to Xbox One as well as having been on computers for years), a slew of non-mmorpg videogames, novels, comic books and so on that together are probably a greater source of revenue than DDI or 4e (during it's run). IMO it's much more likely that these initiatives financed the majority of a new edition of D&D... especially since these seem to be more aligned with the direction the company is now moving in than either 4e the rpg or DDI...

 

[Imaro]

I don't know, in the sense that I haven't seen their accounts.

But would WotC allow a unit to spend two years developing a product if their previous project was such a failure that it doesn't provide enough revenue to support the development? Particularly when a big part of that previous project was supposed to be a subscription revenue stream (ie DDI)?

I mean, stranger things have happened, so it's possible, but it doesn't strike me as very probable.

The previous Tabletop rpg's performance may be exactly why this time around WotC has chosen to focus on the numerous other incarnations of "D&D" (boardgames, videogames, novels, movies, etc.).

On another note I find it extremely interesting that DDI... ofttimes characterized by 4e fans as turning an enormous profit, even to the point of being compared to "free money" for WotC... is being ended (no new material, no updates, etc.) as opposed to being built upon and capitalized upon for 5e... but then all we have is speculation

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know, in the sense that I haven't seen their accounts.

But would WotC allow a unit to spend two years developing a product if their previous project was such a failure that it doesn't provide enough revenue to support the development? Particularly when a big part of that previous project was supposed to be a subscription revenue stream (ie DDI)?

I mean, stranger things have happened, so it's possible, but it doesn't strike me as very probable.

I think if 3E was a big enough success, but 4E wasn't, they might, because it still might be worth the investment if you feel there is potential revenue there. But I don't know how they make these kinds of decisions at WotC or what information they had when they made it.