D&D General You are given the reigns: what do you do?

[Micah Sweet]

Not sure what, exactly, screams "action" about "really obviously fake grimoire cover." Because that's what the 3.0 and 3.5e core books had. No characters at all. Even when you get to stuff like PHBII, it's a grimoire with a little tiny picture aping the "steal the statue's gem eye" art from the 1st edition PHB.

I won't defend some of the 4e cover art, because yes, some if it is just sort of...flat. Notably the PHB and DMG (though I personally found the MM to be pretty good, if overwroght, as is typical of WAR's work.) Some of the other 4e cover art is quite good, though--and much of that comes from being framed within the action, rather than "posing" as you say.

Though people still seem to love that one picture of a guy holding up a small green dragon they've just killed, which is very much posing for the camera, not action.

First of all, I never said the 3e covers were action pieces, just that I liked them better than the 4e poses, AND that I liked the 1e action pieces better than either. Two separate statements.

Also, at least the "I caught a fish THIS big!" picture you reference suggests that some action just happened, if not right this minute.

To be fair, also not a big fan of WAR's as you say "overwrought" work. Completely agree on that score. Feels like he's trying too hard in every piece IMO.

 

[TwoSix]

To you maybe. I'll take them over the artificial poses of 4e any day. Of course, my preference is for the action scenes of 1e. Adventurers should be doing something, not posing for a photo shoot.

I'm in the middle. Full agreement with @Pedantic that the faux-grimoire, brown and gold trade dress with the sepia pages of 3.5 is my favorite look for any edition of D&D. Don't know how else to describe it except that they're handsome books.

The actual cover art of most of the 3.5 books, the smaller ones contained within a portrait frame, I find to be fairly weak. 4e has better cover art, but much weaker trade dress (never got behind the strong antiseptic white of the logo banner), and I think the technical layout of the pages of powers was much better as a reference tool than for making an enjoyable read. (The argument over the value of utility versus presentation in TTRPG rulebooks has been done to death, so I'm not trying to rehash it here.)

I like a lot of the interior art of 4e, especially the tall, narrow images for class descriptions. The "wizard's research notebook" drawing at the start of chapters for 3e books was pretty great, though.

All that aside, the best interior art for me was 2e, hands down. (I didn't grow up in the 1e era, so I have zero nostalgia and little love for the B&W line drawings in those books.)

 

[Zardnaar]

First of all, I never said the 3e covers were action pieces, just that I liked them better than the 4e poses, AND that I liked the 1e action pieces better than either. Two separate statements.

Also, at least the "I caught a fish THIS big!" picture you reference suggests that some action just happened, if not right this minute.

To be fair, also not a big fan of WAR's as you say "overwrought" work. Completely agree on that score. Feels like he's trying too hard in every piece IMO.

3.5 and 4E covers both sucked tbh. Unless you like brown a lot or WAR art a lot.

3.5 core and things like draconomicon are fine.

 

[Zaukrie]

As for my 5 products:

PHB with all the rules you need to play. No rules NEEDED to play are in the DMG (except for one thing, magic items, which isn't in DMG).
DMG - this book is all advice and examples (including a simple setting and adventure).....no magic items!
Magic and More Supplement - magic items, traps, puzzles (maybe even a cosmology, but I think not)
MM - Much more like 4e in terms of how we see 4-5 different types of goblins (leaders, "normal", minions, spellcaster)
Setting book - I THINK this is Faerun, but likely only part of it. I would prefer Nentir Vale, but I think FR is a real brand we can't give up. I'd likely concentrate on the Sword Coast, given the movie and novels and stuff mostly being there, even if I didn't love that idea. There would be a lot more emphasis on adventures than we sometimes see in setting books, though, and less detailed lore.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm in the middle. Full agreement with @Pedantic that the faux-grimoire, brown and gold trade dress with the sepia pages of 3.5 is my favorite look for any edition of D&D. Don't know how else to describe it except that they're handsome books.

The actual cover art of most of the 3.5 books, the smaller ones contained within a portrait frame, I find to be fairly weak. 4e has better cover art, but much weaker trade dress (never got behind the strong antiseptic white of the logo banner), and I think the technical layout of the pages of powers was much better as a reference tool than for making an enjoyable read. (The argument over the value of utility versus presentation in TTRPG rulebooks has been done to death, so I'm not trying to rehash it here.)

I like a lot of the interior art of 4e, especially the tall, narrow images for class descriptions. The "wizard's research notebook" drawing at the start of chapters for 3e books was pretty great, though.

All that aside, the best interior art for me was 2e, hands down. (I didn't grow up in the 1e era, so I have zero nostalgia and little love for the B&W line drawings in those books.)

You certainly won't hear any argument from me on the internal style of 4e books being over-simplified. I think they were angling for like, a slick "Apple Product" style look? But it comes across as dry, like what you'd see in a classroom textbook.

I think a hybrid 3e/4e method would work best. As you say, sepia-tone, giving the visual texture of parchment, and chapter art that looks like a da Vinci sketchbook--those were solid aesthetic choices. But the individual bits of splash art in 4e were, IMO, better-handled; 3e went a bit overboard with trying to integrate the art directly into/between the text, when it's more effective if used tastefully as banners, columns, or other similar stuff. Leave the more "intrusive" art for special occasions, when you REALLY want the art to almost literally pop out of the page at the reader.

I very much think that if the books themselves had looked, internally, like 3e books, 4e would have sold better and been better received. It wouldn't have fixed everything, but good Lord, did it prove that presentation is nine tenths of the love...

 

[LordEntrails]

What rules does he use for the Ford F-150? I'd like to see a monster stat block for a truck.

No idea, and I don't think it was a game he was running. Maybe one he talked about with friends or played in. I don't know. I'm thoroughly baffled by the concept. Haven't had a chance to ask him more about it.

My point was that apparently at least some of the younger crowd plays a very different D&D than most of us on ENWorld do.

 

[Incenjucar]

No idea, and I don't think it was a game he was running. Maybe one he talked about with friends or played in. I don't know. I'm thoroughly baffled by the concept. Haven't had a chance to ask him more about it.

My point was that apparently at least some of the younger crowd plays a very different D&D than most of us on ENWorld do.

This is why I feel experiments are needed to figure out what drives the growing audience. A sufficiently successful one-off can be expanded on, but be otherwise designed to be self-contained. WotC does do these, but very slowly.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Imagine: Wizards of the Coast decides that you, yes YOU, are the perfect person to revitalize any one of the existing editions of (A)D&D and givce you the job of Line Developer for the re-launch.

Comment 0 - this is very much the kind of question software product managers interviewing with Google, Amazon, etc get asked. (I was asked once by the Google interviewer "Imagine you are the Product Line Director for a new Windows phone. What would you do?" I said "Apply to Google or Apple" I don't think he got the joke, cause I didn't get the job ) I have been practicing similar questions for about a year. I'm going to try to NOT write up everything; but maybe my questions and answers will give a bit of insight into how software Product folks in larger corporations think...

First thing I'd ask the leadership team - what is our goal here? Top of the list I'd ask - are there any over-arching strategic goals that need to be factored in? (for example, we want more sales via our digital channels - ok, that will adjust our strategy). At some point, we may decide on a specific geo to focus on - or maybe we'll go global. (For example, what if we decided to aggressively move into the Chinese "scripted homicide" craze to get the D&D brand into China?) I'm going to assume that we're going to focus on the geos that got us here (NA, EU, ANZAC) and that YES we want to enhance our digital channels. Also, taking the OP into consideration, the commandment comes down that we MUST build our new version on top of an old version of D&D and that data shows that no matter our success metrics, 5 - yes 5 - products are the exact and only best number of products to offer in the first year. Ok, I can work with that.

Next question - do we need to maximize profit or maximize sales or maximize users? These are not the same thing, and depending on the answer leads to very different approaches. My assumption is WotC wants to maximize profit (otherwise why have there been so many layoffs?). But I could also see a world where they want the D&D brand to be as ubiquitous as say, for example, Marvel. That's more interesting to me, so I'm going to say they want to maximize users/user growth while maintaining current profit margins.

Now we're dropping down to a bit more tactical topics - there are a lot of ways to maximize user growth. But first we need to decide - do we want just user growth (ie people signing up for D&D Beyond)? Or user engagement? I'm going to say we've got data showing that folks who engage with D&D brand for more than 6 months have a lifetime value of around $125. That's a wild-ass assumption by someone outside the organization. If I was in the org, I'd have access to every single piece of data they have on purchase patterns, usage patterns, sales channels, cost breakdowns etc etc. Anyway, let's say Lifetime Value (LTV) is $125 IF someone has been engaged with the D&D brand for more than 6 months. If less than that, their LTV drops to ~$30. So it behooves us to get folks excited by D&D and engaged with the brand. We'll focus on increasing user Engagement, not just initial sign-ups.

There are a number of ways to "increase user engagement". Which is the best?

• Increase initial user sign-ups (ie on D&D Beyond, or purchase a PHB, or watch the D&D channel)?
• Increase adoption by initial users? (they make a character on D&D Beyond; they sign up for Adventurer's League. Ummm, we have a problem - we don't have a lot of ways to assess user adoption - maybe there's an opportunity here!?)
• Increase existing user engagement?
• Minimize churn?
• (Note, these are literally the phrases all software product folks use when strategizing about their product. ALL. PRODUCT. PEOPLE. at least in modern software development).

I'm running out of steam writing this post, and I'm sure y'all have run out of steam reading it. Typically this sort of question is answered in an interview over the course of 20-25 minutes - which is a lot to type.

I'll answer the actual "from the heart" part in another post...

 

[Reynard]

I'm running out of steam writing this post, and I'm sure y'all have run out of steam reading it. Typically this sort of question is answered in an interview over the course of 20-25 minutes - which is a lot to type.

I promise, you didn't get the job.

 

[Raiztt]

If we're talking great internal layout, and not just art, Old School Essentials should be the standard if not mandatory mode of presentation for rules text.