Why D&D is basically Playboy

[TentacleSurpris]

It makes sense to me now. Wizards business strategy is basically the same as Playboy's at this point. They have a paper product that anchors a branding, licensing and merchandising strategy, but the paper product really isn't that important anymore, financially or priority-wise.

If I look at the DND website, I see T-shirts, video games, platforms, miniature games, boardgames, iphone cases, comic books, and Dragon+ to market the products. I only see one thin paper sourcebook in the year and a half since 5e began its run. The paper product is really just there to keep interest in the real business.

It's the same with Playboy. They took nudity out of the magazine to improve marketability in china and India. They turfed their original demographic and market (young men who want to see naked ladies) so they could build nightclubs and sell more purses and lighters. Here's an interesting article about them, and you see the exact same business strategy: http://qz.com/522672/china-not-online-porn-is-why-playboy-is-dumping-nude-photographs/

As enthusiasts of the PNP DND game, I don't expect much better. I think it's more likely that there is a Drizzt Do Urden series on Netflix than a psionics handbook in the next 5 years.

As an aside, keep in mind that 5e will not run forever, it will be replaced with a 6e when core book sales dry up. Based on history, that will take 3-7 years. By that point, how many sourcebooks will there have been? I estimate 2-4 at most, and the disappointingly thin SCAG already takes one of those slots. Will Rangers ever get fixed?

[Tanarii]

Will Rangers ever get fixed?Rangers aren't broken.

Since you got that wrong, I have no reason to assume the rest of your theory is correct. :smalltongue:

[Douche]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say they are both selling you a fantasy of something that'll never actually come true.

Yeah, man. Books are dumb. Especially when they're just taking up space and other people look through them for the cool pictures and such. They should just give out free pdfs of everything.

Also, there's so much free stuff out there that playboy nudity is obsolete. It's so tame and "classy" anyway that no one is even interested in it. The actual content - like interviews and stuff - is worth way more than some "tasteful" pics of girls laying in positions that would never occur in real life.

[krugaan]

As enthusiasts of the PNP DND game, I don't expect much better. I think it's more likely that there is a Drizzt Do Urden series on Netflix than a psionics handbook in the next 5 years.


Honestly? How many live action DnD anything's have there been? Not counting the Uwe Boll movie which I heard was terrible...

They are printing less books because people requested less books, IIRC. They're investing more on increasing their user base with things like rule simplification and AL. That seems far more sound at this point than trying to diversify offerings with restaurants and merch, really.

[Talakeal]

It makes sense to me now. Wizards business strategy is basically the same as Playboy's at this point. They have a paper product that anchors a branding, licensing and merchandising strategy, but the paper product really isn't that important anymore, financially or priority-wise.

If I look at the DND website, I see T-shirts, video games, platforms, miniature games, boardgames, iphone cases, comic books, and Dragon+ to market the products. I only see one thin paper sourcebook in the year and a half since 5e began its run. The paper product is really just there to keep interest in the real business.

It's the same with Playboy. They took nudity out of the magazine to improve marketability in china and India. They turfed their original demographic and market (young men who want to see naked ladies) so they could build nightclubs and sell more purses and lighters. Here's an interesting article about them, and you see the exact same business strategy: http://qz.com/522672/china-not-online-porn-is-why-playboy-is-dumping-nude-photographs/

As enthusiasts of the PNP DND game, I don't expect much better. I think it's more likely that there is a Drizzt Do Urden series on Netflix than a psionics handbook in the next 5 years.

As an aside, keep in mind that 5e will not run forever, it will be replaced with a 6e when core book sales dry up. Based on history, that will take 3-7 years. By that point, how many sourcebooks will there have been? I estimate 2-4 at most, and the disappointingly thin SCAG already takes one of those slots. Will Rangers ever get fixed?

Isn't that also how the comic book industry works? The print products only exist to generate hype for movies, TV shows, video games, etc.?

[Denver]

In a lot of ways, the problem at hand is that of market saturation: unless a huge portion of non-tabletop RPG players decide to jump into tabletop games, then the market has a little room each year for new customers, but otherwise relies on a base of consumers to re-tread the same ground. And of course, while the product very well may attract new customers and players, some will fall off as the system moves forward - satisfied by the product they currently have.

While this isn't the *only* problem innate to selling these products, it is problematic: how do you get a family who has a working fridge to buy this year's model of fridge?

To many players, a functional system in which to play is more valuable than a novel system in which to play, much like how to many families, having a functional fridge is more valuable than having a novel fridge.

So, instead of only selling fridges, the company needs to innovate. Now they sell toasters and blenders and silverware and washing machines and mops.
Similarly, as the market for RPGs has gotten older, the market for ancillary products has grown.

This isn't a bad thing, necessarily - WotC staying business means more additional sourcebooks for their products. But, like you, I feel like the supplements have been a bit lacking...

[JackPhoenix]

Honestly? How many live action DnD anything's have there been? Not counting the Uwe Boll movie which I heard was terrible...

Well, unless if you count The Gamers and Dorkness Rising...there have been 3 movies, apparently, 2 of them were terrible, the 3rd one was merely meh

[krugaan]

Isn't that also how the comic book industry works? The print products only exist to generate hype for movies, TV shows, video games, etc.?

Basically the whole entertainment industry.

Here's how to make money in the entertainment industry:

1) Find profitable IP.
2) develop sensory stimulation of some sort using IP
3) cram it in people's faces until they hate it
4) go to step 1

[Ninja_Prawn]

What's the problem here? I've got all the books I need to run my games, but I can't make my own Drizzt TV series!

[Finieous]

As long as I have my stack of classic issues in the footlocker collection of Moldvay/Cook, AD&D, and the 5e core books, I should have everything I need to keep, uh, gaming for the rest of my life.

[eastmabl]

Ignoring the clickbait nature of the thread title:

To be honest, Wizards gave players a very solid edition with 5E. There's a lot under the hood in the core rules themselves, and the DMG gives us many of the underlying mechanics to engage in effective, balanced homebrew. That, coupled with quality third party publishers like Kobold Press, means that Wizards doesn't need to crank out the book of the month club.

My only complaint is that Wizards hasn't offered up a license or OGL - but then again, with the 3.x SRD, publishers really don't need them.

And psionics. That doesn't sit nicely in the realm of "easy homebrew."

[Daehron]

They turfed their original demographic and market (young men who want to see naked ladies)

Don't confuse your original interest in Playboy with the original demographic and market of an adult mens magazine.

WotC/Hasbro have long pursued licensing opportunities for their products. As did Gary Gygax in his day.

The new folks at the helm are just better at picking appropriate licensing vehicles than the crew in the '80s

http://2warpstoneptune.com/category/dd/dd-non-gaming-merchandise/

AD&D Pencil Sharpeners! Flashlights! Paint by numbers plastic figures! (wait that one may have been ahead of it's time)

[KorvinStarmast]

I like the idea of a canonical world, and an annual or semi annual "season" for releasing canon world adventures in terms of the business model. The current environment is quite a challenge for anyone in the game industry, since Table Top games compete with video games for free time. (Or squandering of not free time, as my wife prefers to call it.)

[TentacleSurpris]

Similarly, as the market for RPGs has gotten older, the market for ancillary products has grown.


I don't mind that tthere are ancillary products. I do mind that the books have mostly been abandoned. Put it this way, Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls come into the office every day for 7.5 hours. What do they spend that time doing? Not writing DND books, that's for sure. If they wrote a few pages a day, you'd have a book every few months from their desks. But you don't. They outsource most of the writing. So whatever the DND department does at Wizards, it isn't writing books anymore. But I do see a lot of licensing deals coming off their desks. So that's what they do. Not writing sourcebooks.

Although they say they're listening to customer feedback, I don't know any customer who said "I want one thin overpriced sourcebook after 14 months with nothing more on the horizon."

If I were a longtime fan of Playboy, would I be excited that they're selling so many T-shirts in China as they cut out the favorite part of the magazine I enjoyed? Anyways the analogy isn't really important, as any analogy pushed too far becomes an untruth.

[krugaan]

I don't mind that tthere are ancillary products. I do mind that the books have mostly been abandoned. Put it this way, Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls come into the office every day for 7.5 hours. What do they spend that time doing? Not writing DND books, that's for sure. If they wrote a few pages a day, you'd have a book every few months from their desks. But you don't. They outsource most of the writing. So whatever the DND department does at Wizards, it isn't writing books anymore. But I do see a lot of licensing deals coming off their desks. So that's what they do. Not writing sourcebooks.

Although they say they're listening to customer feedback, I don't know any customer who said "I want one thin overpriced sourcebook after 14 months with nothing more on the horizon."

If I were a longtime fan of Playboy, would I be excited that they're selling so many T-shirts in China as they cut out the favorite part of the magazine I enjoyed? Anyways the analogy isn't really important, as any analogy pushed too far becomes an untruth.

grunt, its almost like there might be other things to than just write over there...

Also, if the analogy isn't important, why put it in the title?

[ZX6Rob]

I don't mind that tthere are ancillary products. I do mind that the books have mostly been abandoned. Put it this way, Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls come into the office every day for 7.5 hours. What do they spend that time doing? Not writing DND books, that's for sure. If they wrote a few pages a day, you'd have a book every few months from their desks. But you don't. They outsource most of the writing. So whatever the DND department does at Wizards, it isn't writing books anymore. But I do see a lot of licensing deals coming off their desks. So that's what they do. Not writing sourcebooks.

Although they say they're listening to customer feedback, I don't know any customer who said "I want one thin overpriced sourcebook after 14 months with nothing more on the horizon."

If I were a longtime fan of Playboy, would I be excited that they're selling so many T-shirts in China as they cut out the favorite part of the magazine I enjoyed? Anyways the analogy isn't really important, as any analogy pushed too far becomes an untruth.

Well, that's kind of a double-edged sword, isn't it? In the heyday of 3.5, they put out a huge amount of splatbooks, each one brimming with player options. This gave experienced players more options to work with during character creation, but also introduced additional broken, unforeseen combinations of abilities and items, as well as many options that were outright traps or simply sub-par, things which may have been rooted in good ideas but ultimately became flawed in execution. The flood of splats continued throughout 4e's short reign, adding huge numbers of extra classes, powers, and feats.

There's good and bad in that, but I believe that one of the ideas behind this current edition is that they don't want to go crazy with additional splatbooks like they did in previous editions. Now, I want a psionics book as much as the next person, but I also want them to take their time and release a book that truly adds some new elements to the game that have been thoroughly vetted and play-tested. So far, 5e is a remarkably well-balanced blend, with the disparity between classes well reigned in since the heady days of 3.5. I think a smaller number of player options that can be fluffed and applied broadly is a great way to keep it that way. I'll always be hungry for more stuff, because I love this game, but I'd rather have them fewer and farther between if it means that we'll get good, high-quality stuff. So far, I've been very satisfied with the options they've given us -- I like the stuff SCAG brings to the table, for example.

I don't know if the Playboy example is entirely apt, because I still think the biggest product in the line is their pen-and-paper game, and for everything that Wizards of the Coast has been doing to expand the brand, that's still a solid, well-supported product that takes center-stage. I think the times are a' changin', though, and what it means to be able to play that game is shifting somewhat, with the basic rules being available online and a pretty regular drip-feed of new material in the form of Unearthed Arcana articles that are offered on the website.

In short, I think the team is trying to focus on quality over quantity for this edition, and that the state of the D&D game isn't quite as dire as all that. They're expanding the brand, but D&D video games have been around in some form or another since the 1980s, and as for tee-shirts, mugs, and other swag, well, every fandom consumes things like that with rabid fervor. Be silly of them not to offer them when there's a strong market.

[Winter_Wolf]

I can't believe that there hasn't been one "I read it for the articles" joke yet. Too on the nose?

[EggKookoo]

Isn't that also how the comic book industry works? The print products only exist to generate hype for movies, TV shows, video games, etc.?

I don't know if this is irony or a meta-example or what, but Marvel existed through the 70s more or less as a write-off program for a porn publisher.

[GlenSmash!]

If they wrote a few pages a day, you'd have a book every few months from their desks.

Isn't this a part of their deliberate strategy? Less source books to remove barriers from new customers playing D&D? It worked in my case.

And why do they have to write it themselves? I don't understand the insistence some folks seem to have that if WOTC is not doing it in-house then is somehow bad/wrong? Why not let talented game makers from other companies create products under their supervision? It really it baffles me. If I'm willing to pay money to get new content why would I insist on paying that money to WOTC or not at all? If someone is unhappy with the amount of content from WOTC then check out other options like En5inder. There's tons of stuff in there. That said I would love more, and a greater variety of, monsters. It's a good thing I can get 5th Edition Foes!

[Cybren]

One of my favorite things about 5E is the lack of splat books. New material that comes out exists for reasons other than Kewl Powerz, while unearthed arcana supplies very interesting concepts and variants for shaking things up

[Itsjustsoup.com]

I'm still new to 5e, but it's how I'd do a RPG. Spat books do take away some of the magic, thought.

Let's here it for those Dnd Lighters!!

I'll see myself out.