DMs are the future of D&D

[animorte]

Obviously my take out if this lies in the title of the thread.

So, I happened upon this article today and wanted to share it with you folks. The article begins as such, just under the headline:

"D&D historian Ben Riggs offers an open letter to the game's current publishers with advice for not making the same mistakes twice."

It takes quite a moment to get to the point, as any historian must discuss the past as a prologue/segue. (Also briefly touches on the VTT.) Eventually it arrives at this statement:

"And the key to unlocking a bigger, brighter, and more profitable future for D&D is not at Wizards, not at Hasbro, and ironically it isn’t with the players, no.

It’s the Dungeon Masters."

And then soon after up follows with:

"You are going to make money by radically increasing the number of people who play D&D. And you are going to do that by making the lives of those millions of Dungeon Masters much, much easier than they are now."

And finally we get here, with all of his ideas based on history and experience, etc...

"I don’t know how your books are produced, but based on the final products I’ve seen, you should do the following:"

• Campaigns should have one to three authors. Add more with only great caution…
• Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers.
• You should pay your game designers like they are working on video games, and you should give writers royalties.
• There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book.
• Time for playtesting should be included in your production cycle. It should be measured in months.
• Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design.
• Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)

What doth my fellow playgrounders think?

[Xervous]

Well I’d fail a test if the writing prompt was “21st century TTRPG layout and design” and I’m not convinced D&D should be blindly courting Critters.

[ngilop]

I agree with the fewer authors for books. Just seems that the fewer there are, the less miscommunication can happenen and the books feel more whole?

I also agree with the "playtest needs to be longer".

I also agree with the "Boxed, sets yo"


I disagree with the "make it 21st century" what does that even mean? IMO it just buzzwords that have zero actual meaning, but are used to somehow insult things that are older as being 'inherently' worse. Which is just a wrong thing to do, just dismiss something because of its age.

Campaign being pitched by writers and designers is just straight up DUMB. Anybody could have a wonderful idea of a campaign, I hate the whole 'appeal of authority' fallacy that people seem to absolutely LOVE to make these days.

i could take to leave the consistent format, as that has never been a big 'oh no' or 'oh yes' for me.

I am against the giving game designer royalties. Just like i was against the artist who would go on to do the 'marvel X-odus' I think the same thing applies here.

[Tanarii]

What are "21st century RPG layout & design" for adventures? I don't use/read a lot of modern modules, especially from WotC competitors, but the few WotC products I've used are definitely lacking.

Compare and contrast to (pre-Dragonlance "renaissance") TSR modules, and the difference in usability is staggering.

[Pauly]

I remember reading a case study on How Coca Cola became the dominant soft drink in the world. It was focussed on how Coca Cola leveraged itself into new foreign markets.

The succinct version was that Coke made it easy for retailers to sell their product.
- They would deliver anytime you wanted, their competitors delivered on their schedule.
- Their delivery people would carry the product into the store for you, and even restock the displays. Their competitors left their deliveries at your back door.
- They provided fridges and ice boxes for the retailer to sell their product from at a much cheaper rate than buying your own fridge or icebox. These of course had prominent “Coca Cola” signage and built in bottle openers. Their competitors were in the beverage business, not the fridge supply business.

If a RPG company wants to follow this model then their focus should be how to make the GM’s life easier.
What I would suggest on these lines.
- Rules are easily referenced and cross referenced. For example instead of listing all spells in alphabetical order, create sublists. Spells by level, Spells by caster type or whatever before applying the alphabetical order.
- Monster Manual - group the monsters by type or locations, so that all the critters the party are likely to encounter in one event are all in a few pages of each other. I’m not sure how it is now, but it was done inconsistently in older books.
- Provide DM tools at loss leader prices. DM screens, dry erase maps, cardboard stand up figures.
- Have the games designers regularly answer rules questions in the forum of your choice. Then collate this resource.
- Have the handouts for campaign books available online. Maybe lock them behind a QR code so that only someone who has bought the physical book can access them if you’re worried about people using your product without paying for it.

[Tiktakkat]

[*]Campaigns should have one to three authors. Add more with only great caution…

Campaigns should have one line supervisor/editor who knows how to tell authors what can and cannot be included in a product based on a setting bible.
As long as that person can do the job properly, there can be as many authors as can be managed on a timely basis.
[*]Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers.

Not really.
Sure, sometimes a good author can be indulged in doing a favored plot. Other times they need to work on something to support a greater campaign. And still others they just need to be assigned on a product by product basis.
On the other side, players can have some good ideas for a campaign. Why should they be cut out?
[*]You should pay your game designers like they are working on video games, and you should give writers royalties.

Yeah. That sounds nice. And then the actual bottom line comes into play.
[*]There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book.

That might be useful, but sometimes a campaign theme suggests its own format and style.
[*]Time for playtesting should be included in your production cycle. It should be measured in months.

Like payment, that sounds nice, and then a deadline looms.
[*]Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design.

21st century RPG layout & design have been consistently longer than 20th century versions. The first modules were 8 pages in a folder that had the maps. The first campaign settings were 32 pages.
If you want shorter, you need to first 10 years of the hobby, not the last 20.
The thing is, people seem to routinely wany the longer layout and design rather than the shorter.
[*]Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)

The boxed set is what bankrupted TSR, particularly with all those handouts, maps, and such. Going back to that would be a great way to finish off WotC.
Making them as PDFs could work and leave the printing costs to the customers, but eating the production costs or expecting to get away with $100 Kickstarter boxed sets as a standard is not going to work.

Overall, virtually all of the suggestions from that article go against the history of D&D rather than going with past successes.

As for the other part of the article about DMs, most of that is nice in theory.
Making purpose designed introductory products that walk players and DMs through the process has been done in the past, mostly to significant approval and success.
Of course, two of the key elements of making things easier for new DMs is publishing settings and adventures, two things that WotC has moved away from ever since the purchase of TSR and the conclusion that multiple settings split the fan base and reduced sales, rather than recognizing it was all due to poor products with excessive component costs. Instead, multiple settings means picking up fans of multiple sub-genres and making them customers, rather than leaving them to some other company to publish a setting for them to buy.
WotC sponsoring a training program for DMs is another idea that sounds nice - until someone figures out the cost.
Rewarding DMs is a bit different. Back during the RPGA they had a rewards program that favored DMs, including special cards for use in the campaigns and later minis with special paint jobs. It was quite nice. Of course, it is long gone with the RPGA. I wonder if that was because of the cost, but that is a model it seems they have already abandoned and I would not expect them to return to it.

[Mechalich]

The problem with this sort of analysis is that the number of GMs is too small. GMs already make up an overwhelming amount of the purchasing power in the TTRPG space. TTRPGs are well past the 80/20 space and are probably more like 90/10 in terms of distribution and this is a problem for the health of TTRPGs from an economic perspective. The whole recent VVT/OGL fiasco was part of a short-sighted attempt by WotC to change that and try to increase the amount of monetization that could be acquired from the players. That was very poorly orchestrated and executed, but the overall principle is a logical one. The amount of money that can be squeezed from GMs is limited and most of them are already spending as much money as can be reasonably expected. If anything, D&D, as a brand, is continually at risk of bleeding market share by having GMs spread their money across multiple games. For example, in the 1990s, TSR's problem wasn't that GMs stopped buying D&D books it was that they started to buy WW books as well in a manner that was functionally zero sum, and more or less the same thing happened with Pathfinder following the release of 4e (additionally, many D&D GMs are active elsewhere in the hobby space, to the point that money they spend on D&D books is money they don't spend on MTG, which remains zero sum for WotC).

The reality is that TTRPGs are not a very monetizable hobby. There will always be people who invent their own systems and offer them for nothing (there are already an extensive number of games published under the Creative Commons license, including big names like FATE Core) and a huge portion of the participants are going to continue to pay an order of magnitude more for game session snacks than they do on books, minis, or any other traditional published products.

The key to making money off D&D remains, as it has for several decades now, leveraging the IP into other markets. D&D: Honor Among Thieves represents a recent and notable attempt (though it seems they spent too much money on making it), but there have been many. Personally, I'd argue for re-opening the novel line in a brand-new setting, but there are multiple viable options.

[MetroAlien]

I couldn't help but think that many of the problems could much easier be solved with better digitalisation.

I'm not saying to abandon physical goods.
Just make the digital goods better.
As it stands, the amateur community is leagues ahead of commercial publishers in terms of online/digital content, which in any other medium would be an utter shame and disgrace.

I realise that's an overly simplistic diagnosis.
However the reality is that we don't live in the same society anymore that made D&D popular.
The demographic distribution of players/DMs is different.
People's interests/tastes are different.
Their economic circumstances are different.
Their habits/hobbies are different.
The way they play the game is different.

More competent digitalisation would address many of the above points.
Even if it won't solve the problems directly, it would at least start a trend in a positive direction.

[Zuras]

Has the future of D&D (the game, not the brand) ever rested on anyone but the DMs? Are there any hard numbers on how most players first got into the hobby? Were they recruited by friends who already played, or were they interested and found a game online or at a FLGS?

I periodically hear tales of a DM shortage, which obviously seems to indicate that available DMs are a constraint, but I have no idea if this is generally true, or just code for “it’s hard for five newbies to find a DM, and nobody feels up to it because they’re all new to D&D”.

Whether there’s a DM shortage or not, many of the recent adventures have not done new DMs favors. I pity any new DM who was excited about Spelljammer and tried to run that adventure as their very first campaign. Most of the others have been decent, but none have been new-DM friendly like Lost Mine of Phandelver or the other starter adventures. They could do a much better job of making their hardback adventures easier to run.

[Psyren]

And finally we get here, with all of his ideas based on history and experience, etc...

"I don’t know how your books are produced, but based on the final products I’ve seen, you should do the following:"

• Campaigns should have one to three authors. Add more with only great caution…
• Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers.
• You should pay your game designers like they are working on video games, and you should give writers royalties.
• There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book.
• Time for playtesting should be included in your production cycle. It should be measured in months.
• Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design.
• Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)

What doth my fellow playgrounders think?

#1 and #2: not sure what benefit these are supposed to have.

#3: Only WotC can really afford this one, and a cursory glance through their careers page suggests this to already be the case.

#4: This one is already happening too.

#5: Agreed on playtesting, though I'll also point out that not every release needs (public) playtesting. I certainly would have no interest in playtesting Golden Vault or Radiant Citadel for instance, and doing so would likely just slow those down. Having said that, I think Spelljammer's ship rules might have benefited from public feedback prior to release.

#6: Shorter books is a non-starter for me, they're already trimming too much. We haven't had a proper campaign setting since Ravenloft.

#7: I don't think the returns they'd get from all that extraneous stuff would be worth it when they can provide those things digitally at a fraction of the cost. Maps and handouts (which cover the clues/journals bit), maybe, the rest no.

[Tanarii]

[*]Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design.

21st century RPG layout & design have been consistently longer than 20th century versions. The first modules were 8 pages in a folder that had the maps. The first campaign settings were 32 pages.
If you want shorter, you need to first 10 years of the hobby, not the last 20.
The thing is, people seem to routinely wany the longer layout and design rather than the shorter.

Those early and shorter modules were far superior to anything WotC has put out for 5e. Their 3e and 4e content was better, but even then they don't seem to have any idea how to write something that's supposed to be picked up and actively used at the table. Instead they seem to want to make homework for the DM to study and memorize at great length. I end up having to condense the whole damn thing down to make it usable.

[Atranen]

"I don’t know how your books are produced, but based on the final products I’ve seen, you should do the following:"

[*]Campaigns should have one to three authors. Add more with only great caution…

I don't see a need for this.

[*]Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers.

How do they do it now?

[*]There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book.

Hmm. There is now, but they also have bad formatting and continually get feedback about it. "Consisting formatting" and "good formatting" work against each other, in that particular products may not be able to use the formatting that works best for them.

I'd like for them to give authors more leeway to play around with formatting in future releases.

[*]Time for playtesting should be included in your production cycle. It should be measured in months.

How do they do it now?

[*]Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)

I like this idea.

Despite all of this, Mechalich has the right idea:

The key to making money off D&D remains, as it has for several decades now, leveraging the IP into other markets. D&D: Honor Among Thieves represents a recent and notable attempt (though it seems they spent too much money on making it), but there have been many. Personally, I'd argue for re-opening the novel line in a brand-new setting, but there are multiple viable options.

They will not increase their profits that much, certainly not to the extent they're hoping for, by being a TTRPG company. If they want to do so, they need to add tie in products and make a brand that extends beyond the TTRPG space. In that sense, the current leadership at Hasbro knows what they're doing (although I'm not a fan of the direction).

I periodically hear tales of a DM shortage, which obviously seems to indicate that available DMs are a constraint, but I have no idea if this is generally true, or just code for “it’s hard for five newbies to find a DM, and nobody feels up to it because they’re all new to D&D”.

In the FLGS I run AL games in, we're always in need of more DMs. The average table size is 6, and some weeks there aren't enough games for everyone who wants to play.

Those early and shorter modules were far superior to anything WotC has put out for 5e. Their 3e and 4e content was better, but even then they don't seem to have any idea how to write something that's supposed to be picked up and actively used at the table. Instead they seem to want to make homework for the DM to study and memorize at great length. I end up having to condense the whole damn thing down to make it usable.

I agree that more useable formatting at the table needs to be a priority. The Arcane Library has a good set of 5e adventures which do a good job of that, and Wizards could learn from them.

[KorvinStarmast]

Those early and shorter modules were far superior to anything WotC has put out for 5e.

Cheaper to produce, but I do like some of the better art and 'don't need a magnifying glass to read' fonts and format. The books need to have less wasted space.

KurtKurageous has some good suggestions on improved presentation so that the DM isn't having to do hours of prep just to run the adventure. That problem potentially disincentivizes the DM from getting a second published adventure.

And the key to unlocking a bigger, brighter, and more profitable future for D&D is not at Wizards, not at Hasbro, and ironically it isn’t with the players, no.

It’s the Dungeon Masters."[/b][/I][/indent]

This is true.
A VTT with a low barrier to entry would also be nice.

[Talakeal]

- Rules are easily referenced and cross referenced. For example instead of listing all spells in alphabetical order, create sublists. Spells by level, Spells by caster type or whatever before applying the alphabetical order.
- Monster Manual - group the monsters by type or locations, so that all the critters the party are likely to encounter in one event are all in a few pages of each other. I’m not sure how it is now, but it was done inconsistently in older books.

This is easier said than done.

2E grouped spells by class and level, and it was always a pain to find a specific spell if you couldn't remember the exact details.

Likewise, monsters come in multiple categories. Do you sort them by CR? By terrain? By Type? By role? All of the above?

This is much easier to do for a module than a source book though, although page space can still be an issue.

- Have the games designers regularly answer rules questions in the forum of your choice. Then collate this resource.

Amazing idea.

Although you still get into weird situations where authors insist the words they wrote mean something different than what they do without explanation or clarification.

I am still salty at some of the answers I have gotten from Games Workshop FAQs that directly contradict the printed rules without an explanation of how to apply the new rules or if it applies to other areas.

[Zuras]

In the FLGS I run AL games in, we're always in need of more DMs. The average table size is 6, and some weeks there aren't enough games for everyone who wants to play.

Oh, they’re always running out of DMs at my FLGS too. I’m just never sure if that’s an issue of time slots, burnout, or actual shortage. There’s obviously an issue with connecting experienced DMs with new players, but is it because the DMs aren’t there at all, or that the DMs exist but aren’t available?

For most other systems you have the opposite problem—a GM wants to run a game but needs to rustle up some players. I think this is more a result of how the situations arise—someone is quite unlikely to learn enough about FATE to be interested in playing a game of it without either knowing a GM or GMing themselves, while it’s much more likely that someone encounters Critical Role or otherwise decides they want to play D&D and shows up at an FLGS.

[gbaji]

And then soon after up follows with:

"You are going to make money by radically increasing the number of people who play D&D. And you are going to do that by making the lives of those millions of Dungeon Masters much, much easier than they are now."

This I completely agree with. The more your game system engages and encourages DMs to run games, the more they and their players will buy materials for playing.

Having said that, there are some modifications I'd make to the list:

[*]Campaigns should have one to three authors. Add more with only great caution…[*]Campaigns should be pitched by authors & designers.

They need to fist make a clear and firm distinction between "setting books" and "campaign books". There should be one set of authors for the setting. The setting source books should define everything that exists in that setting. The campaign/adventure/whatever books should detail specific areas, and specific sets of adventures/campaigns in those areas, but should *not* introduce new races, new classes, new spells, new feats, new whatever. Everything that exists in a campaign module should be something covered directly by any special rules in the setting source(s) themselves (or in the standard rules, of course).

IMO, the biggest failing of D&D (for several editions now) is the muddling of these. It makes it incredibly non-DM friendly for three reasons:

1. The DM is trying to juggle new rules and "things" in the game when they just bought the thing to run a set of adventures in a given setting.
2. The DM is constantly having to search though different books for where some rule or spell or feat is actually listed.
3. The DM feels pressured to buy additional campaign books, even though he may not be interested in the adventures within, purely for the setting stuff (or because the players want to use something contained within).

Oh. And it creates setting inconsistencies, since the authors of the campaign books may very well put things into the setting that more or less "break" it for other purposes. Stick to the rules above, and you don't have that problem (well, or at least they are constrained to the hopefully smaller and more collaborative set of "setting authors"). And yes, this does mean that campaign books need to include what setting books are required. But that's honestly going to likely involve less insane cross book buying nonesense than we've seen in the past. Heaven forbid this be clearly listed in the "required to play" section of the campaign book rather than discovered during the course of attempting to DM.

[*]You should pay your game designers like they are working on video games, and you should give writers royalties.[*]There should be a consistent format for campaigns that carries over from book to book.[*]Time for playtesting should be included in your production cycle. It should be measured in months.

Eh... I could see that. Again, as long as you restrict the focus of different types of books, this works out fine. Encourages folks writing adventures/campaigns to actually write good adventures and campaigns, and folks writing the setting books to similarly write quality stuff. If you don't have this, what will happen is every writer for every book feeling obligated to push extra (but "cool") garbage into their books. You actually will incentivise writers to put additional "setting source" stuff into their campaign source books because there's now a financial incentive to make this "the book everyone has to buy if they want <cool classes/feats/spells/whatever>.

Which is a disaster waiting to happen IMO.

[*]Your books need to be shorter! Incorporate 21st century RPG layout & design.[*]Return to the boxed set! Create handouts, maps, character portraits, in-game journals, & clues to go with the game. (Also make PDFs of those goodies available.)

It's not about the size of the books, but whether the books are just bloated or not. I don't think DMs have a problem buying large source books, if the books actually contain interesting and useful stuff in them. 150 pages of retread stuff is not worth it IMO.

I'm also not sure how "shorter books" conflates with "more stuff in boxed sets". Most of that stuff is stuff the DMs don't really care about at all after maybe the first boxed set they buy. Again, I'm still looking in terms of "settings vs campaigns" here. I find myself paging through old source books from time to time for interesting ideas and whatnot, but the extra stuff? Odds are it's tossed to the side and never used. Character portraits? Journals? If a player wants to draw a portrait, just draw it. You can buy paper from anywhere. Same thing with journals. They sell these things called notebooks (the paper kind, not the laptop kind) for pretty cheap too.

I like physical clue things in murder mystery game boxes. Not in my TTRPG boxes. That's always adventure specific stuff, so it's never likely to be re-used anyway.

Maps are always nice of course. Reference sheets as well. You know, stuff that actually makes DMing the setting or campaign easier. More importantly, how about just assuming that I have access to a copier and let me run off the sheets for whatever myself (and hey, this would be great downloadable content with a QR code or something right?) I don't need the trinket stuff at all though.

And sure. Create player targeted content as well if you want. Sell packages of cut out pop up minis maybe. Heck. Sell varients of monsters for GMs to buy as well if they want. TSR used to contract with mini manufacturers to make "official content" stuff back in the day. No clue if Hasbro still does this or not. But yeah, any sort of visual aids to playing may be useful but *don't* just bundle those in with the other stuff. Er. I suppose you could bundle some basics in with a "starter box" type thing, maybe. But most DMs are looking at "cost to enter" any new thing. That includes settings in a game system. If you bundle too much stuff that may be nice but not necessary, DMs will balk. For some, it's a high entry cost. For others (like us long time veterans), we've got cabinets with drawers full of miniatures and terrain stuff, and props, and whatnot for just about anything we might need to portray for the players. I'm not interested in paying extra for a boxed set with more lower quality stuff in it as well.

Just give me what I need to play the game. Then give me just what additional stuff I need to run adventures in a setting. Then give me just what extra additional stuff I need to run this adventure/campaign in that setting. Modularize the heck out of this. Let me buy extras as well, but also make those additional content (and heaven forbid you use the same "royalties to artists/authors" concept so that you make sure these things are actually worth the cost for those interested, right?).

[Pauly]

This is easier said than done.

2E grouped spells by class and level, and it was always a pain to find a specific spell if you couldn't remember the exact details.

Likewise, monsters come in multiple categories. Do you sort them by CR? By terrain? By Type? By role? All of the above?

This is much easier to do for a module than a source book though, although page space can still be an issue.



Amazing idea.

Although you still get into weird situations where authors insist the words they wrote mean something different than what they do without explanation or clarification.

I am still salty at some of the answers I have gotten from Games Workshop FAQs that directly contradict the printed rules without an explanation of how to apply the new rules or if it applies to other areas.

On the grouping of monsters I was thinking along the lines of either geographic locations such as mountains, cities, coasts etc. or by type goblinoid, dragonic, demonic etc. As you say that may be easier in a setting book than for a general resource such as a MM.

When I was active in Flames of War the official forum had a rules sub forum. Most of the time rules questions were able to be answered by other players quoting the relevant rules. But on tricky questions the game designers would contribute, often by quoting someone’s reply and noting “this is correct” or by providing their own clarification in more complex matters.

GW is the poster child for how to playtest wrongly, how to write unclear and contradictory rules and how to provide unhelpful clarifications. Part of it is the inbuilt design where they blow up their systems and reset with a new edition every 5 or 6 years forcing players to keep buying new stuff to remain current. Part of it is they playtest within a closed community where everyone can talk to the designer about their intention.

[Chauncymancer]

Campaign being pitched by writers and designers is just straight up DUMB. Anybody could have a wonderful idea of a campaign, I hate the whole 'appeal of authority' fallacy that people seem to absolutely LOVE to make these days.

Isn't the idea here more "whoever comes up with the idea for the campaign should also be the person who writes the campaign"?

[ngilop]

I remember reading a case study on How Coca Cola became the dominant soft drink in the world. It was focussed on how Coca Cola leveraged itself into new foreign markets.

The succinct version was that Coke made it easy for retailers to sell their product.
- They would deliver anytime you wanted, their competitors delivered on their schedule.
- Their delivery people would carry the product into the store for you, and even restock the displays. Their competitors left their deliveries at your back door.
- They provided fridges and ice boxes for the retailer to sell their product from at a much cheaper rate than buying your own fridge or icebox. These of course had prominent “Coca Cola” signage and built in bottle openers. Their competitors were in the beverage business, not the fridge supply business.

If a RPG company wants to follow this model then their focus should be how to make the GM’s life easier.
What I would suggest on these lines.
- Rules are easily referenced and cross referenced. For example instead of listing all spells in alphabetical order, create sublists. Spells by level, Spells by caster type or whatever before applying the alphabetical order.
- Monster Manual - group the monsters by type or locations, so that all the critters the party are likely to encounter in one event are all in a few pages of each other. I’m not sure how it is now, but it was done inconsistently in older books.
- Provide DM tools at loss leader prices. DM screens, dry erase maps, cardboard stand up figures.
- Have the games designers regularly answer rules questions in the forum of your choice. Then collate this resource.
- Have the handouts for campaign books available online. Maybe lock them behind a QR code so that only someone who has bought the physical book can access them if you’re worried about people using your product without paying for it.

Bolded what I am specifically responding to.

I imagine the best monster manual/bestiary/book of foes, etc etc to have them listed aplhabetically (with meta divisons) I.E you wouldn't find Void Hunter under the Vs but under the Demon category, which would also be listed alphabetically.

THEN in the back with a few indexes, you list them by power level/CR/whatever, by habitat, and other sensible lists

[Psyren]

Okay I read through the whole article.

The parts that aren't banal ("Make DMs lives easier!" Wow what a revelatory concept that's completely at odds with everything they're doing) or weirdly condescending ("Hey, did you guys know D&D isn't a video game?") are just poorly explained. He presents his suggestions as though how they'll lead to increased adoption and therefore profit are completely self-evident with no elaboration at all. The whole thing is just bizarre.

[gbaji]

Okay I read through the whole article.

The parts that aren't banal ("Make DMs lives easier!" Wow what a revelatory concept that's completely at odds with everything they're doing) or weirdly condescending ("Hey, did you guys know D&D isn't a video game?") are just poorly explained. He presents his suggestions as though how they'll lead to increased adoption and therefore profit are completely self-evident with no elaboration at all. The whole thing is just bizarre.

Well, he's not wrong that encouraging more people to DM will result in more players playing the game. I think the tricky point (which you touched on), is how that correlates to their (presumed) goal of "make more money". You have to not only encourage more people to DM, but at the same time encourage them to purchase more products *and* get the players to maybe purchase some stuff as well.

And to be perfectly honest, and as much as long time players may hate this, their model of "churn out new source and campaign books for an edition of D&D until things start to wane, then release a new edition every 8-10 years and repeat" is not a terrible business model. And hey. It has the unique advantage that they can literally release the same exact setting and campaigns, just retooled for a new edition, over and over.

So yeah. Sadly, if we're to take the article's point at face value, the best option is to "dumb down" the game to the point where a random 12 year old can pick it up and run a game successfully, and then dangle a ton of stock pre-written stuff in front of them to run more stuff for their friends, and then encourage more of them to become DMs and have to buy the same stuff as well. That's literally where the most money is going to be. That's not necessarily what veteran players will want though, but let's be honest. How many veteran GMs rush out and buy the latest source books anyway? How many rush out to buy the latest edition? A lot of long time TTRPG players tend to pick a handful of game systems that they already own and know and play in those games. Sure. They'll occasionally buy something that looks interesting and play through it. But between myself and my friends, we're far more interested in picking up varous boxed non-rpg (ish) games (like say Arham Horror), than spending cash on a new edition of D&D (or sourcebooks for the same).

So yeah. Sadly, their target audience really is young middle school aged kids. That's not really a bad thing IMO. Get's them into the hobby. And have a business model that keeps them buying things perhaps through their mid-20s or so. And yeah, over time, they'll learn that you don't actually have to go out and buy a ton of source stuff to play a TTRPG (like at all). At which point they'll fall out of the target audience anyway. Sure, there will always be some residual stuff. Us older folks do buy things from time to time, but it's unclear if targetting for our tastes is really the best marketing ploy. The king of stuff that I'm looking for would likely not appeal to younger folks, especially if they are new to DMing in the first place. I suppose it's possible to have a range of products to appeal to each stage of development in TTRPGing, but the cost to produce is a pretty fixed cost per product, and you're splitting your audience. So... hard to pull off IMO.

[Mechalich]

Well, he's not wrong that encouraging more people to DM will result in more players playing the game. I think the tricky point (which you touched on), is how that correlates to their (presumed) goal of "make more money". You have to not only encourage more people to DM, but at the same time encourage them to purchase more products *and* get the players to maybe purchase some stuff as well.

The big problem is that the kind of thing GMs, and especially the kind of GMs who spend lots of money, want to purchase are not the same as the kind of thing casual players (and casual GMs, which includes a huge portion of the people who periodically get badgered into GMing just so the group can play at all) want to purchase. That's the central tension of RPG publishing. There aren't enough obsessive GMs to make any large amount of money targeting products at them, while at the same time there aren't enough high margin products for casual players to make a ton of money. There's also the problem that many of things casual players buy are durable one-time purchases. Dice are a good example. Any given player only needs so many, and they don't really break or get used up. Even things like playmats and minis, if treated with a modicum of care, don't really wear out.

[Keltest]

The big problem is that the kind of thing GMs, and especially the kind of GMs who spend lots of money, want to purchase are not the same as the kind of thing casual players (and casual GMs, which includes a huge portion of the people who periodically get badgered into GMing just so the group can play at all) want to purchase. That's the central tension of RPG publishing. There aren't enough obsessive GMs to make any large amount of money targeting products at them, while at the same time there aren't enough high margin products for casual players to make a ton of money. There's also the problem that many of things casual players buy are durable one-time purchases. Dice are a good example. Any given player only needs so many, and they don't really break or get used up. Even things like playmats and minis, if treated with a modicum of care, don't really wear out.

In this particular instance, I think trying to cater to the broad casual playerbase is a mistake. One of the big draws of tabletop gaming like D&D is that only one person really needs most of the kit, and it can be shared around the table. In my group growing up, we had something like 8-10 players (of whom about half would show up to any given session) and I was the only one who actually owned any of the sourcebooks. There was simply no need for 10 different people to have a copy of the PHB, we just didn't need it. Only one person ended up actually buying their own sourcebooks, just because they went on to join and run a second group and needed their own access.

Realistically, the market audience should be divided into GMs and Tables, not individuals. Market a player resource to the table, a GM resource to the GM, and don't cross the streams. Quality of both ends up suffering if you try and market things to both groups simultaneously.

[Psyren]

Well, he's not wrong that encouraging more people to DM will result in more players playing the game. I think the tricky point (which you touched on), is how that correlates to their (presumed) goal of "make more money". You have to not only encourage more people to DM, but at the same time encourage them to purchase more products *and* get the players to maybe purchase some stuff as well.

Actually, my objection isn't to the correlation of "get more people to play = make more money." That's how most free-to-play-game-with-premium-upcharges work, which D&D fundamentally is due to things like Basic and the SRD.

Rather, my objection is to the correlation of "do these things Ben Riggs listed = get more people to play." Not because they can't possibly work, but because he presented them as ipse dixit without elaborating on how or why. He proposes that too many people are pitching and authoring books, but with no information on how many those currently are within WotC or how reducing that number is supposed to help. He claims books are too long, but shares no survey data or even anecdotes indicating that to be the case. He says new releases should include playtests months before they come out, when they already do. None of it makes a lot of sense to me.

[Mechalich]

In this particular instance, I think trying to cater to the broad casual playerbase is a mistake. One of the big draws of tabletop gaming like D&D is that only one person really needs most of the kit, and it can be shared around the table. In my group growing up, we had something like 8-10 players (of whom about half would show up to any given session) and I was the only one who actually owned any of the sourcebooks. There was simply no need for 10 different people to have a copy of the PHB, we just didn't need it. Only one person ended up actually buying their own sourcebooks, just because they went on to join and run a second group and needed their own access.

Realistically, the market audience should be divided into GMs and Tables, not individuals. Market a player resource to the table, a GM resource to the GM, and don't cross the streams. Quality of both ends up suffering if you try and market things to both groups simultaneously.

The problem is that the number of GMs, and the amount of money they have available to sink into the hobby, is too small to sustain a large business. Consider Paizo, which has been the second largest player in the market for a decade plus now. It employs, at most, 150 people, and usually considerably less. White Wolf, during its heyday, was similar in size (for that matter so was TSR back in the early 90s). A company like Mophidius or Onyx Path is nothing but a tiny management team and some freelancers. A huge number of the games on the market are essentially single-person operations, often produced by someone who has some other full-time job. Ultimately, the overall size of the economic pie that can be made solely from the collector side of TTRPGs is quite small.

Most of the things listed in the article are fixes that could potentially improve the hobby, by making better products that GMs want more, but they are unlikely to grow the overall size of the economic pie in any significant way. At best, it's the kind of incremental change that could increase GM number and expenditures by 10% or so. That's not nothing, but from the perspective of a company like WotC (to say nothing of Hasbro), that's little more than a rounding error.

WotC's overall goal is to change the ongoing economic structure behind how TTRPGs operate. I believe they recognize that the current 90/10 setup reliant on collector GMs has extremely limited returns. They want to get money out of the other 90%. We know this, since they just tried to come up with a scheme to do so. It might have worked, or it might not have, and we'll never know because in the process, they offended the all-important 10% that sustain their current business model and had to quickly backpedal and abandon the scheme.

And this sort of trap is very common in business situations that operate like this. Any attempt to pivot to new approaches risks offending the hardcore fanbase and therefore faces immense resistance. This can happen even in huge industries. Major League Baseball implemented a pitch clock this year, in the hope of growing the younger and less patient fanbase after decades of delay by the hardcore group that pays for a lot of season tickets.

Now, ultimately, with regard to TTRPGs, I think the low-growth GM-focused model is fine. Book production costs are low enough now (and likely to fall further since the largest since expense, the art, can now be sourced to AI if needed) that a small company can spew out a huge amount of relatively high-quality content to a tiny group of purchasers. The risk of a 1990s TSR-style bankruptcy, where they printed a huge number of books no one wanted (ex. the entire Birthright Setting) and had to eat the loss, is much, much lower. D&D being run as a small, GM-focused company would be just fine in terms of producing the game.

However, we're past that. D&D, and a small number of other TTRPG properties such as the oWoD, are now, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, more valuable as IP than they are as functional games. The game is secondary to other markets.

[Psyren]

The problem is that the number of GMs, and the amount of money they have available to sink into the hobby, is too small to sustain a large business. Consider Paizo, which has been the second largest player in the market for a decade plus now. It employs, at most, 150 people, and usually considerably less. White Wolf, during its heyday, was similar in size (for that matter so was TSR back in the early 90s). A company like Mophidius or Onyx Path is nothing but a tiny management team and some freelancers. A huge number of the games on the market are essentially single-person operations, often produced by someone who has some other full-time job. Ultimately, the overall size of the economic pie that can be made solely from the collector side of TTRPGs is quite small.

The hobby is currently supporting a large business, so I think it's more accurate to say that it's too small to sustain multiple large businesses.

WotC's overall goal is to change the ongoing economic structure behind how TTRPGs operate. I believe they recognize that the current 90/10 setup reliant on collector GMs has extremely limited returns. They want to get money out of the other 90%. We know this, since they just tried to come up with a scheme to do so. It might have worked, or it might not have, and we'll never know because in the process, they offended the all-important 10% that sustain their current business model and had to quickly backpedal and abandon the scheme.

1) It's entirely moot now, but the OGL royalty stuff was aimed at creators (and a pretty small percentage even of those), not the 90% of players. About the only impact from the player side of things would have been a lot less third-party content, which (a) most players don't even use, and (b) wouldn't really have translated into increased gains from players for WotC anyway.

2) I think there's a lot more untapped potential in the "10%" than you seem to. There are a lot of people who like the game and are interested in transitioning to DMing that feel overwhelmed by all the planning and setup that might be required - especially with the current suite of digital tools available. There's also plenty of demand for those DMs - so much so that entire cottage industries both of paid DMs and even middlemen platforms to connect with them are continuing to both appear and expand.

[Mechalich]

The hobby is currently supporting a large business, so I think it's more accurate to say that it's too small to sustain multiple large businesses.

D&D is responsible for somewhere in the range of 100-150 million in revenue. Seeing as D&D represents upwards of 80% of the TTRPG hobby as a whole (at least in the US). The whole space is almost certainly less than $200 million in revenue annually, and a lot of that money goes agents outside of the hobby itself like bookstores, and printing companies.

Right now, the hobby sustains one mid-sized business: The WotC D&D division. There's also a handful of small businesses like Paizo and then a huge number of tiny bespoke groups.

1) It's entirely moot now, but the OGL royalty stuff was aimed at creators (and a pretty small percentage even of those), not the 90% of players. About the only impact from the player side of things would have been a lot less third-party content, which (a) most players don't even use, and (b) wouldn't really have translated into increased gains from players for WotC anyway.

I interpreted the whole thing as a play to force people onto the forthcoming subscription-based virtual tabletop. The OGL stuff was mostly ancillary to that, but it created a huge scrum anyway.

2) I think there's a lot more untapped potential in the "10%" than you seem to. There are a lot of people who like the game and are interested in transitioning to DMing that feel overwhelmed by all the planning and setup that might be required - especially with the current suite of digital tools available. There's also plenty of demand for those DMs - so much so that entire cottage industries both of paid DMs and even middlemen platforms to connect with them are continuing to both appear and expand.

The problem is that it's not simply a matter of creating GMs, it's creating GMs who will spend money, which is not necessarily the same thing. This is also where edition churn creates issues. RPG books, once purchased, are good basically forever (yes, it's possible to use them hard enough they fall apart, but basically everything made since 2000 is pretty high quality and can withstand a high level of use, only PHBs and similar core books ever seem in any danger of breaking down), which a GM who continues to run the same system simply stops buying books when that system is discontinued. I have all the 3.5e books I'll ever buy, and I can run that system whenever I want. Somewhat ironically, an urban fantasy setting like the oWoD had a better setup for continually updating their setting because the real world changes over time and the source material needs to change to reflect that. I have a whole bunch of oWoD revised books published at the same time as the 3.5e ones, and they feel very dated in a manner that simply doesn't apply to D&D.

WotC seems to very much desire to transition to a subscription model, and there are good reasons for that, from an economic perspective, but it runs counter to how the industry has always functioned, and personally, I don't think that's good for its overall health.

[Psyren]

D&D is responsible for somewhere in the range of 100-150 million in revenue. Seeing as D&D represents upwards of 80% of the TTRPG hobby as a whole (at least in the US). The whole space is almost certainly less than $200 million in revenue annually, and a lot of that money goes agents outside of the hobby itself like bookstores, and printing companies.

Right now, the hobby sustains one mid-sized business: The WotC D&D division. There's also a handful of small businesses like Paizo and then a huge number of tiny bespoke groups.

Without a definition of "large" and "mid-size" we can align around then there's not much point in us going further down this road.

I interpreted the whole thing as a play to force people onto the forthcoming subscription-based virtual tabletop. The OGL stuff was mostly ancillary to that, but it created a huge scrum anyway.

Even with "1.1/1.2" they were still going to have their special deals with the likes of roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. As I said though, it's moot now.

The problem is that it's not simply a matter of creating GMs, it's creating GMs who will spend money, which is not necessarily the same thing. This is also where edition churn creates issues. RPG books, once purchased, are good basically forever (yes, it's possible to use them hard enough they fall apart, but basically everything made since 2000 is pretty high quality and can withstand a high level of use, only PHBs and similar core books ever seem in any danger of breaking down), which a GM who continues to run the same system simply stops buying books when that system is discontinued. I have all the 3.5e books I'll ever buy, and I can run that system whenever I want. Somewhat ironically, an urban fantasy setting like the oWoD had a better setup for continually updating their setting because the real world changes over time and the source material needs to change to reflect that. I have a whole bunch of oWoD revised books published at the same time as the 3.5e ones, and they feel very dated in a manner that simply doesn't apply to D&D.

Every version of D&D is finite, as is every version of Pathfinder etc. The goal isn't to get DMs to spend money on the same iteration of the game forever, the goal is to revisit the design every decade or so to align around the changing interests and values of the new generation. Whether they call those iterations "editions" or not is ultimately irrelevant, that's the process - and it's the same process that every long-form piece of entertainment media goes through (see also Star Trek, Doctor Who etc.)

WotC seems to very much desire to transition to a subscription model, and there are good reasons for that, from an economic perspective, but it runs counter to how the industry has always functioned, and personally, I don't think that's good for its overall health.

Eh, so long as they offer me something that justifies paying a subscription then I'm fine with it, just like I'm fine with everything else I'm currently subscribed to. I don't think it's an inherently evil or even ill-fitting business model, like any other it can be used well or misused. Certainly I think the old business model of relying on books can be done poorly too (even putting aside disasters like TSR, 3.5 was pretty saturated by the end too.)

[Satinavian]

What i have seen beginner GMs often want are :

- Good modules. It is easier to get confidence and experience in running the game if you can fall back to something. I have seen so many people saying that they would give running (obscure system) a shot, but only if there would be official modules they could start with and are new to the group.

- Standard NPC stats. Yes, not monster stats (those are usually plenty), NPC stats. When stuff goes off the rails, it often ends up with the PCs interacting with background or even completely improvised NPCs and new GMs tend to have no idea how to improvise sensible stats and skills for e.g. the master baker who is suddenly in a chase or the seasoned guardsmen in a negotiation.

Setting books are a good thing but i generally don't see new GMs particularly interested in them. Its more seasoned players/GMs buying them to dive deeper into the world/look for new inspirations.

[Eldan]

That's definitely something 5E is missing a bit. "I get into a fistfight with the five burly sailors, what are their stats". In 3E, I could just look up "Expert, level 3" or whatever.