Continuation of the D&D brand (from a business perspective)

[Yora]

Yes, you suspected right, this is a 5th Edition thread.

Right at the beginning let me say that I intend this thread not to become a discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of the rules of recent and older editions, but to have the focus on marketing strategies and business descisions. Since this topic has come up quite a bit in several threads in recent weeks, I think having a dedicated thread for it might be a good idea, so it doesn't swamp other threads about completely different issues.

I didn't believe any rumors about 4th Edition until the official announcement, but right now I expect "something" to be announced within this year. It's not that I think something is wrong with the 4th Edition (though I don't play it) or have any wishes how any upcomming publications should be. I just think that the current business situation indicates that 4th Edition will not continue as it is to see a full 10 year run up until 2018 (roughly the time AD&D 1st Ed., AD&D 2nd Ed, and D&D 3rd Ed lasted).

- A revision in the form of Essentials has been nothing unusual for D&D editions, though it has been by far the fastes one.
- Shortly after Essentials was launched, many upcomming releases had been canceled.
- Reportedly WotC has been laying off staff over the last months and what books are released are written by freelancers.
- Some store owners claim that the direct competitor Pathfinder is outselling D&D. Also, recent releases like the Dark Sun books seem to no longer be able to be restocked if sold out.
- Finally, the head of the 4th Edition development team has released some blog entries in his column on the offixial website, in which he is analyzing what D&D is really about, and what are the bare bones on which every D&D edition has to be build on to really be D&D. I think such thoughts are the first step to develop a new edition, or to look back on your work and consider what was done right and what done wrong.

As it is right now, it does not look as if there will be any more major releases for the 4th Edition. But since D&D is a hugely popular brand and brand recognition is one of the most valuable things a company can have, I really can't imagine WotC continuing D&D with only four minor releases per year or just discontinuing it and leave the brand dormant.
Something has to happen, and a second reboot of 4th Edition after just one year is something nobody would really dare to risk.

If it will be called Dungeon & Dragons 5th Edition, I don't know. It's merely the most simple way to again make some good money with the brand. An alternative could be to pull out of the RPG market as it seems to be widely considered that the real profits of WotC are made in trading card games and other products. And who would have thought that TSR, Sega, or Atari would one day not be the big names of the RPG and video game business? Though as of now, I see nothing indicating a sell of the brand in any way.
With GenCon and PAX the next months, I expect an announcement of any kind to be made rather soon.

Again, this is not about the pros and cons of any rules system. I just can't see the D&D brand disappearing in some drawer to gather dust.
Share your thoughts.

[Neoxenok]

I'm not really sure how much I can or can't say about 4th edition's successes/failures in terms of Wizard's ability to do business with the D&D brand using that system.

I've never been much of a fan of 4th edition, but it is a fun game to play the few times I have played it.

As to your comments, I would be very interested in seeing if there will be an announcement as you've indicated. I'll have to keep an eye on the wizards of the coast website to see if there are any developments. The situation does get curiouser and curiouser (if that's even a word.)

I doubt they'd sell the D&D brand, however, if there's any chance of making money from it in the future, even if it isn't doing so hot right now.

Do you have a link to the relevant blog entry or entries?

[Knaight]

Regarding the brand, I seriously doubt it will be sold. It is the single most important brand in tabletop RPG's right now, and nontrivial outside of it. Among CRPGs, D&D based games occupy a fairly major niche, and the opportunity to maintain that niche is somewhat significant. Outside of them, there is DDO, which, while a minor RPG, is still reasonably successful. Pathfinder, by contrast, doesn't have anything beyond recognition in the sphere of tabletop RPGs, and even if it were to outsell D&D in that regard -which it may be doing- it is a less major brand.

[Gryffon]

5th edition is not around the corner.

They have too much leveraged into 4th edition. All of the software tools they've created took long enough for them to create for 4th edition, not to mention their still working on some of them.

Neverwinter(the software) will be launching soon which is based on 4e rules. I'm sure they expect to get plenty of synergy from this.

A movie coming out this December with source material tie-in.

They're not expecting to leave 4e soon. They're spending too much effort in the brand to do so.

[Friv]

None of the big RPG publishers are doing well right now:

* White Wolf has switched to an online-only model, and has drastically cut back their sales of pretty much every line. Most of their lines are down to 0-1 books released so far this year.
* Steve Jackson Games is also producing a lot of PDFs, along with a lot of PDF releases of older games. I could only find 3 GURPS books, 3 In Nomine books, plus their magazine so far this year. (Which, to be fair, is more than White Wolf put out for most of their lines.)
* Palladium seems to be doing alright, with another 24 books planned between now and 2012, but I keep running into references that a lot of their books never actually get made, so I don't know how much to trust that.

Regardless, my point is that the industry's been hit by the recession, and are looking at how to deal with that. General agreement seems to be that a new edition of a game is more likely to act as a barrier than an encouragement at the moment.

[bloodtide]

I can see a 5th Edition easy enough. It would be a great way for them to attempt to win back some of us customers.


Take myself for example. I used to put aside a good $20-$30 a paycheck to buy RPG stuff. I have a ton of books, and a lot are WotC books. I'd even buy books I only had a vague interest in, but every month I was planning to spend around $50 on RPG stuff.

And D&D used to put out lots of stuff.....in 2E we got tons and tons of nice softcover books to buy cheep. 3E almost did away with softcover books, for some reason, and when to big hard cover ones.

And 3E started my shift away from WotC D&D stuff. I would just want something 'new' for my weekly game. It did not need to be a ton of stuff, just a little. And with the desert left by WotC, I bought tons and tons of third party d20 stuff. I loved all the School spell books, the quintessential books and such. While WotC put out like one book every other month.

Worse WotC would put out a massive hard cover $40 adventure book......but someone else would put out an $11 book about some random thing...guess the one I picked.

Then with 4E, it's like they don't even want to put out things any more....

But if the can do a good 'back to basics' 5E, they can get a customer out of me.

[Yora]

I don't really care what edition books are for when they are fluff-heavy. I think the 4th Ed Manual of the Planes is a very nice book that I like a lot. But apart from the Campaign Settings, on which I already have much more much more detailed material from 3rd and 2nd Edition, there don't seem to be any. The last three years, it seem to have been exclusively about more powers and magic items. If that would change, I wouldn't mind if 4th Edition continues. If it doesn't, I don't mind what edition it is at all.

[Knaight]

I don't really care what edition books are for when they are fluff-heavy. I think the 4th Ed Manual of the Planes is a very nice book that I like a lot. But apart from the Campaign Settings, on which I already have much more much more detailed material from 3rd and 2nd Edition, there don't seem to be any. The last three years, it seem to have been exclusively about more powers and magic items. If that would change, I wouldn't mind if 4th Edition continues. If it doesn't, I don't mind what edition it is at all.

This is a very good point, and I know full well you aren't alone on this. I personally don't play GURPS much at all, and never GM it. I would never buy a GURPS book for crunch, and yet I have several GURPS books, largely because the fluff tends to be very well written, very well researched, and fundamentally interesting.

[Gamer Girl]

I think They should do a nice 50/50 between fluff and crunch. Really, it's not so hard..for each piece of crunch, make fluff for it.

But I too think WotC made a bad, bad mistake with going for all 'big expensive hard cover books'. I've bought lots of other d20 stuff to fill the void they left. And what gets me is...it's not that hard to put out cheap soft cover books...yet WotC completely dumped the idea.

Good example:

My group was just about to head to a thinly detailed city, where I have nothing planned. I needed a bit on inspiration. So head to the book store where on the self are the five big hard cover WotC books that I already have. But also in the self I find a D20 'Wererats', a nice little paperback 50 pages for $11.00. I've never cared much for wererats, but I buy it anyway. It has lots of fluff about wererats, and then some were feats, classes and such too. Just flipping though it I get the idea of using the 'Rat Lord' wererat druid as an 'urban avenger'. And with the book I'm able to write up a nice adventure for the next game, using all the fluff backed up by the crunch. And the game works out great!

All for $11...not $30 for a hardcover WotC book. Just think, if WotC put out a were book for each one...that's $11 times what? five? ten? I would have bought them all over time.


And why does not WotC put out adventures anymore? That would be a great way to make money...nice, soft cover under $20 adventures.

[Dacia Brabant]

- Finally, the head of the 4th Edition development team has released some blog entries in his column on the offixial website, in which he is analyzing what D&D is really about, and what are the bare bones on which every D&D edition has to be build on to really be D&D. I think such thoughts are the first step to develop a new edition, or to look back on your work and consider what was done right and what done wrong.

Actually, as a fan of 4e, this is the best news I've heard in months. Like I said in your previous thread, I think they lost sight of what the game is about, and without a sense of coherence built around that idea the game was doomed to be no more than rules in a pretty package. So if the head developer is asking these questions, this is a good sign that they realize what the problem is and hopefully they'll be able to solve it. (Hopefully because you never know if the execs will get in the way.)

What 4e D&D is supposed to be about, to my view at least, is giving every player at the table equal opportunity to have fun playing their character the way they want to play it. Granted that every party has to have a Leader (which makes sense from an OOC perspective anyway--teams that don't have a captain are going to fail, it's just human nature), the way powers were developed allowed every role and every archetype within that role to do something effective every turn. This is great! But they forgot one very important thing: playing a character isn't just powers and stats and dice, it's about knowing who your character is, and about exploring the world they're in and what they should be doing in it.

The movement against "fluff" during 4e's initial outlay was just flat-out stupid in my opinion. If people don't buy a bunch of setting splatbooks and that's just a waste, fine, but you can still include a good amount of flavor in the main releases. There are DM-oriented books that are quite good in this regard, but the player-oriented ones missed that boat completely. And much as I like the Essentials classes for restoring some classic class archetypes, those books are even worse in this regard than the PHBs or "Setting X: Players Guide" books. But at least they're cheap.

And on that note, Gamer Girl above makes very good points, too, especially the books all being high-end hardcovers that are just too much money in this economy. I think they forgot who their market is. You can get a lot of mileage out of those cheap softcover books as long as they're well written and have some useful character-creating or adventure-creating material in them.

But at the end of the day I think what the devs need to realize is there's more to a tabletop RPG than mechanics and art. If anything that's the video game comparison right there, you can have a PC or console RPG that's mostly graphics, rules and a user interface and that's fine, Torchlight is a fun game, but tabletop RPGs are a social experience and need tools to facilitate that.

[Yora]

But I too think WotC made a bad, bad mistake with going for all 'big expensive hard cover books'. I've bought lots of other d20 stuff to fill the void they left. And what gets me is...it's not that hard to put out cheap soft cover books...yet WotC completely dumped the idea.

There were a small number of softcover books in 3.0, but they went completely hardcover with 3.5. And when 4th Ed. started, they kept to it, so I guess the 3.5e books had still been quite profitable so continuing that way seemed like a good idea.
That said, I don't think that their problem really lies in the huge expanses and retail prices of hardcover books. The content seems to be a much more likely reason for low profits.

[Gamer Girl]

There were a small number of softcover books in 3.0, but they went completely hardcover with 3.5. And when 4th Ed. started, they kept to it, so I guess the 3.5e books had still been quite profitable so continuing that way seemed like a good idea.
That said, I don't think that their problem really lies in the huge expanses and retail prices of hardcover books. The content seems to be a much more likely reason for low profits.

I just don't get why dropped soft cover books. You can't tell me it has to do with expenses. I'm sure that a single $40 hardcover costs much more then a dozen soft cover ones.

Gaming books will always have a 'content' problem: everyone likes different stuff. I own plenty of 100 page books that I've used like three magic items from and ignored the rest. I mostly only use about half of a book anyway.

Bigger is not always better. Take the 'race' books. They mash three races in a big hardcover book. So I like gnomes and see they are 1/3 of Races of Stone, but I don't care about the wasted space about the other two races. And at $30 I just decide to skip the book. But if WotC would have put out a soft cover Gnome book for just $10, I'd buy that in a second.

[Crow]

The "Races of" books are a great example. If they split those into 3 separate softcovers, I may have bought some of them.

However they decide to continue the brand, I hope that things move away from the "everybody uses powers" thing. Let me explain. As someone above said, playing D&D is about playing the game how you want to play the game. But for me, this goes a little bit further.

One of the things that turned me off of 4e was the whole powers system in general. Not because it was bad in and of itself, but because sometimes, I don't want to sift through a bunch of one-shot abilities. Sure you could just do a "melee basic attack", but the system is pretty much built on you being effective by using your powers...but I'm straying from the point. In previous editions, if I was in a "toolbox" mood, I could pick up a wizard or cleric, then as more material was released for 2nd, I could grab a sorcerer or something for "toolbox lite" if I felt like it. If I wasn't in the mood to play that way, I could roll up a relatively simple fighter, perhaps with a few tricks (in 3e+), or a thief/rogue.

4e restricted all characters to "toolbox lite" mode, which I just don't feel like playing *all* the time. I've heard Essentials fixed this somewhat, but there were a few other things I didn't like about 4e that are still keeping me away from it, which don't belong in this thread.

Either way, whatever they do, I think they could benefit from releasing material *slower* than they have for 4e. The amount of content they were releasing for 4e was just too much, too fast. Even if you have a regular game-a-week schedule that nobody misses, you're only getting 4 games before new material is being inserted into the game (not that you *have* to include it, but some people feel compelled to do it on principle it seems). Granted this quick release schedule was almost neccessary at first because of the barebones material included in the first three books (partly because powers were formatted in a way to take up oodles of space).

Oh and let's hope that when they do release a new edition, the core books have an index that's actually worth a damn. Compare the index in the 4e PHB to the 3.5 one.

[KingofMadCows]

Don't underestimate D&D CRPG's. The two most successful 3E D&D games, NWN and NWN2, sold a combined 4 million copies, along with an additional 4 million copies of their expansion packs.

No 4E D&D games have been released yet but there is a lot of potential there. Obsidian has said that they're interested in making another Icewind Dale game and they finally have their own game engine that they used for Dungeon Siege 3, and it's pretty bug free.

[Kislath]

I'm an old-schooler who, quite frankly, has a bit of trouble figuring out, converting to, and keeping up with all the new rules which have come out over just the past few years. Bear in mind that I was once considered one of the all-time great DM's, too, with memorized specs and stats and rules enough in my head to rival Brian van Hoose.

Today I feel like a complete idiot when it comes to D&D, though, and I've given up on even trying to make any sense of it. I stopped buying books at 3.0.

If they really want to bring D&D to a new generation, they would do well to make it simple again, and then add in all the splatstuff over time. if I heard a rumor that D&D 5 was going to be as fun and easy to learn as 1st edition, or even 2nd, then I'd scarf up every new book they made. It's hard for me to teach & reach new players when I can't get into it myself, but if it went back to the golden age, new players would swell the ranks and D&D would be secure for another 25 years at least.

[Kurald Galain]

For what it's worth, WOTC has mentioned one 4E splatbook for 2012, about heroes from the Elemental Chaos.

[Yora]

Aren't Heroes books about thematically fluffed powers and equipment?

[Tyndmyr]

There were a small number of softcover books in 3.0, but they went completely hardcover with 3.5. And when 4th Ed. started, they kept to it, so I guess the 3.5e books had still been quite profitable so continuing that way seemed like a good idea.
That said, I don't think that their problem really lies in the huge expanses and retail prices of hardcover books. The content seems to be a much more likely reason for low profits.

While they did focus much more heavily on hardcover, they technically didn't go completely hardcover. For instance, I have a softcover 3.5 phb.

They did stop the old brown thin softcovers, though.

Personally, price has never been a huge discriminator for me. There has always been cheap RPGs on the shelves that I've ignored. Sure, cheap is nice, but if something doesn't interest me, I'm not gonna touch it no matter how cheap it is.

[Cybren]

None of the big RPG publishers are doing well right now:

* White Wolf has switched to an online-only model, and has drastically cut back their sales of pretty much every line. Most of their lines are down to 0-1 books released so far this year.
* Steve Jackson Games is also producing a lot of PDFs, along with a lot of PDF releases of older games. I could only find 3 GURPS books, 3 In Nomine books, plus their magazine so far this year. (Which, to be fair, is more than White Wolf put out for most of their lines.)
* Palladium seems to be doing alright, with another 24 books planned between now and 2012, but I keep running into references that a lot of their books never actually get made, so I don't know how much to trust that.

Regardless, my point is that the industry's been hit by the recession, and are looking at how to deal with that. General agreement seems to be that a new edition of a game is more likely to act as a barrier than an encouragement at the moment.

Switching to online only is more them knowing where the market is. Yes RPGs in general aren't doing too well, but i'd argue that the sheer size of D&Ds market share back when 4th edition launched wasn't exactly healthy. Pathfinder splintering their audience was not good for WotC, and them pulling all PDFs to stop piracy only to release a software program thats monthly fee was absurdly cheaper than actually buying all the material it gave you access to seemed contrary to that point. I think 4th edition has been a series of haphazard management decisions

[bloodtide]

Switching to online only is more them knowing where the market is. Yes RPGs in general aren't doing too well, but i'd argue that the sheer size of D&Ds market share back when 4th edition launched wasn't exactly healthy. Pathfinder splintering their audience was not good for WotC, and them pulling all PDFs to stop piracy only to release a software program thats monthly fee was absurdly cheaper than actually buying all the material it gave you access to seemed contrary to that point. I think 4th edition has been a series of haphazard management decisions

I don't think that WotC can do anything about pirate PDFs. But most of the people that download them (kids) won't buy the real book anyway(or can't buy the real book anyway). Only about 20% of the adults do the 'get D&D for free', and the rest of us buy the books.

Why not do the video game-like thing. Have to books filled with unique codes that can access online stuff?

I never liked the idea of D&D software.....I knew they could never, ever do that right.

[Gamer Girl]

I'm an old-schooler who, quite frankly, has a bit of trouble figuring out, converting to, and keeping up with all the new rules which have come out over just the past few years. Bear in mind that I was once considered one of the all-time great DM's, too, with memorized specs and stats and rules enough in my head to rival Brian van Hoose.

Today I feel like a complete idiot when it comes to D&D, though, and I've given up on even trying to make any sense of it. I stopped buying books at 3.0.

If they really want to bring D&D to a new generation, they would do well to make it simple again, and then add in all the splatstuff over time. if I heard a rumor that D&D 5 was going to be as fun and easy to learn as 1st edition, or even 2nd, then I'd scarf up every new book they made. It's hard for me to teach & reach new players when I can't get into it myself, but if it went back to the golden age, new players would swell the ranks and D&D would be secure for another 25 years at least.

Now that's a good idea. Come out with D&D Classic: the 1E rules. Then add Classics 2 and 3 and then even add WoW 4 and 5. But make it so you can play any number.

A simple game like 1E is a great way to get players. It's easy to do..''ok you have a sword and a cloak, lets go adventure'' then it is to go ''OK you have different types of powers, once an encounter you can shift wowzer move a foe you hit with a weapon 2 squares''. 4E is tough with even just the square stuff.(''Um, Dm how far is a 'square'?'')


I think it also might be important to shift the focus away from the little kids. WotC is way to focused on the little kids; ''I wants to be a kool radical zoom zoom dragon necromancer holy warrior assassin, wooo hoo! My mistikal sword of omens can cut through 18 demensions at one time and does monga-zonga damage, woo hoo!''. While I think it's a good idea to make a D&D variant for them (the Woo Hoo edition), I also think they should put out more intelligent and sophisticated stuff for us over 18 types.

[Yora]

Little kids have quite some money to spare, no expanses, and are easy to get to buy compulsively anything by a brand they currently like.
When I see a new RPG, I might give the basic rulebook a try and even like it a lot and play it with my group. But then we keep playing for years with just one book.

[Lord Raziere]

@ Gamer Girl: A more sophisticated version of DnD you say?
hmmm....I dunno....what would that involve?
oh right, an entire revamp of DnD as we know it. I would like such a version myself, but your basically asking reinvent the entirety of the game. from a business perspective that might be too radical a shift.

I mean first we would have to throw out the black and white morality, then we'd have to establish rules that would loot incredibly rare a lot of being restricted to plot purposes, then would have to come up with justifiable reasons as to why there are adventurers around without looking silly or just being a handwave, as well as giving the players to actually act like heroes instead of looting murderous hobos, then make an actual consistent economy, make the monsters you have to face actually scary and competent, oh and make sure that this all makes sense ok? I'm all for a sophisticated DnD but it would take work, and all of that without being lazy and just blatantly making it darker and edgier.

[SlashRunner]

Now that's a good idea. Come out with D&D Classic: the 1E rules. Then add Classics 2 and 3 and then even add WoW 4 and 5. But make it so you can play any number.

A simple game like 1E is a great way to get players. It's easy to do..''ok you have a sword and a cloak, lets go adventure'' then it is to go ''OK you have different types of powers, once an encounter you can shift wowzer move a foe you hit with a weapon 2 squares''. 4E is tough with even just the square stuff.(''Um, Dm how far is a 'square'?'')


I think it also might be important to shift the focus away from the little kids. WotC is way to focused on the little kids; ''I wants to be a kool radical zoom zoom dragon necromancer holy warrior assassin, wooo hoo! My mistikal sword of omens can cut through 18 demensions at one time and does monga-zonga damage, woo hoo!''. While I think it's a good idea to make a D&D variant for them (the Woo Hoo edition), I also think they should put out more intelligent and sophisticated stuff for us over 18 types.

Hey, a person's age is in no way a measure of how intelligent or sophisticated they are. I'm not giving away my age on principle, but I'm going to put it out there that I'm not over 18. When I first decided to try D&D, I tried 4th edition.
I was appalled. It didn't feel like REAL fantasy, it felt like an MMO (by the way, I love MMO's and play them quite often, but that's besides the point). When I want to play an MMO, I'll go sit down on my computer and look at the pretty effects instead of sitting around at a table moving little miniature figures and rolling dice. When I sit down to play D&D, a tabletop RPG, I want to play an RPG.

So don't say that we "under 18 types" are incapable of doing intelligent and sophisticated things. Because I assure you, we are.

[Lord Raziere]

Slash, I agree with you to, I've been sophisticated and mature since I was 14, but can't we keep the things that are good about 4e? like all the classes and races being equally powerful? I want a game thats sophisticated sure but I also want one that is fair.

[Eric Tolle]

From a business standpoint, most of the ideas I'm seeing bandied about here are really bad, much as they may be favorites of individual fans. Not that I'm a publisher, but here's what I've heard from people in the business:

Hardbacks cost more to produce, but are more profitable.

Adventures and "fluff" books cost the same to produce, but sell much less than rules and mechanics based books. Therefore time spent in production is better spent on mechanics.

Adventures are pretty much the least profitable thing a company can put out, for all the goodwill it builds among vocal fans

Not to be too cynical, and there's obviously a few companies that have made a profit disregarding the above rules. But in general, it's decent busines sense for a company to listen carefully to the most vocal fans online, and then do something else.

[hangedman1984]

but can't we keep the things that are good about 4e? like all the classes and races being equally powerful?

not sure how great an idea that is, 4e classes are all equally powerful cuz they're all the same. I'm not saying that its impossible to be both balanced and varied, but WotC hasn't managed it yet.

[Lord Raziere]

not sure how great an idea that is, 4e classes are all equally powerful cuz they're all the same. I'm not saying that its impossible to be both balanced and varied, but WotC hasn't managed it yet.

so.... you deride them all as the same, because of one incredibly flexible mechanic?

by that logic, all Exalts are the same, they all use Charms after all.

and all 3.5 casters are the same, they all use the vancian spell system after all.

[Crow]

so.... you deride them all as the same, because of one incredibly flexible mechanic?

by that logic, all Exalts are the same, they all use Charms after all.

and all 3.5 casters are the same, they all use the vancian spell system after all.

Yes, but in 3.5 if you don't feel like playing with a vancian system, you can always roll up a rogue or something.

[Lord Raziere]

Yes, but in 3.5 if you don't feel like playing with a vancian system, you can always roll up a rogue or something.

so? go ahead keep saying that all 4e classes are the same, by that logic all vancian casters are the same, and all the noncasters are the same because they all use feats and skills