Derailing the Tippyverse; or how to make DnD look as expected

[Samwise]

Everything I've seen so far points to this not being the case.  Their stated plans are about one book per fiscal quarter, with the next book being released in April.  Looks like all of the player content (races, subclasses, spells, etc) will be made available for free, so they're clearly not trying to make their money off selling that kind of thing.  My guess is their monetizing through licensing deals and stuff rather than selling a ton of books like they did with the last few editions.

Yeah, see . . .

That's what they said about 3E.
And for about six months, that's what they did.

Then they said it about 3.5.
And for about 3 months, that's what they did.

They didn't bother saying it about 4E, and they did it so poorly they had to do "4.5" sooner than anyone expected.

But the real kicker is that way back when, as things were kicking off, an internal document from WotC regarding sales and marketing and such got out. Among its other observations and conclusions were things like the four-man party being "typical", campaigns lasting 1-year, miniatures being a major side expenditure, all of which were either hard wired into the rules or became a product line, were two critical recommendations:

First, the five-year game cycle before a new version of the core books would come out relating to how long most people were "paying" customers.
Second, the sale of splat books during that cycle to take advantage of the spending of said customers.

And for that five-year game cycle?

Well, things got "quirky" with 3E and they had to do the 3.5 revision early, but lo and behold! five years after 3.5 came out and . . . 4E.
And then . . . lo and behold! five years after 4E came out, 5E was announced to be released, although it wound up delayed an entire year due to issues among the design team.

As for licensing deals, given how the suits upstairs hate on the D20 OGL that they can never get rid of and how that affected the 4E license, I find it very difficult to believe they intend to rely on licensees for anything other than video games for 5E.

Now maybe, MAYBE, they have some new management team that plans to reverse what they have done for the past 16 years in the same way the design team seems to be wanting to call a mulligan, but I'd have to see that for at least a year beyond the release of the core books.

[linklord231]

Everything I've seen so far points to this not being the case.  Their stated plans are about one book per fiscal quarter, with the next book being released in April ¹.  Looks like all of the player content (races, subclasses, spells, etc) will be made available for free², so they're clearly not trying to make their money off selling that kind of thing.  My guess is their monetizing through licensing deals and stuff rather than selling a ton of books like they did with the last few editions ³.

1. So 3 books plus an adventure to start with, plus one splat per three months with Faerun/Eberron intolerable fans demanding more than that is supposed to be a "slow" rate?

2. I'm going to ask for a citation on that. Because contrary to everything you just said Racial Variants are not in 5th's SRD, nor are most of the Spells and about half the Classes so literally as a matter of fact, they done the exact opposite of what you claim they will.

3. You are aware that "licensing deals" is a euphemism for "2nd party splat" right? *sighs*

1.  I didn't say "slow", that was directed at the idea of "splatbook of the month" being standard for 5e.  Which it clearly is not. 

2. 

Characters in the D&D tabletop roleplaying game can help prevent devastation to the lands and people of the Forgotten Realms in the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure by Wizards of the Coast and Sasquatch Game Studio. Princes of the Apocalypse is available on April 7, 2015 and includes an epic adventure for characters levels 1–15 as well as new elemental spells and the element-touched genasi as a new playable race. In addition, a free download will be available in mid-March that includes more new races plus the player content available in Princes of the Apocalypse, just in time for the start of the Elemental Evil season of the D&D Adventurers League.

Yes, I am interpreting "the player content" to be spells, races, and subclasses, because I honestly don't know what else that could mean. 

3.  I used the term "licensing deals" to mean non-book materials with the D&D brand, like the Neverwinter MMO, the Wizkids minis, the Galeforce 9 products, or the newly announced Elemental Evil board game, all of which are mentioned in the press release I quoted above.

[SorO_Lost]

As brought up before by someone else, 3rd/3.5/4th started slow too. And your figure excludes Adventures which brings up

Characters in the D&D tabletop roleplaying game can help prevent devastation to the lands and people of the Forgotten Realms in the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure by Wizards of the Coast and Sasquatch Game Studio. Princes of the Apocalypse is available on April 7, 2015 and includes an epic adventure for characters levels 1–15 as well as new elemental spells and the element-touched genasi as a new playable race. In addition, a free download will be available in mid-March that includes more new races plus the player content available in Princes of the Apocalypse, just in time for the start of the Elemental Evil season of the D&D Adventurers League.

One new splat and at least two more adventures are being released within the first few months because you know the Temple of Elemental Evil is bound to be coming out during this "season" too.

This isn't a new tactic or even proof they are not trying to force content down your throat. 3rd/3.5 had previews, Articles, and at least two dozen free Adventures that's been compiled into a dozen "free D&D" threads on top of an SRD that contained several splat books on it's own. And for all of that "released" content you still have over 90 published splat books in seven years, countless adventurers, legions of minis, several video games, and a ton of continued novels. It'd going to take more than one free adventure to convince me a company is going to bankrupt them selves to prove your opinion right.

[linklord231]

Soro, I don't even know what you're disagreeing with any more.  All I'm saying is, it seems unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that 5th will suffer from the "1 book per month" problem that 3.5 and 4th did, without some kind of evidence.  I'm all for calling companies out on their bullshit when they claim to have learned their lesson and then immediately prove that they haven't, but that doesn't seem to be the case so far. 

To me, one book per 4 months that includes a 1st-15th level adventure, some character options, and presumably some kind of setting/fluff material seems absolutely reasonable. 

[SorO_Lost]

I'm all for calling companies out on their bullshit when they claim to have learned their lesson and then immediately prove that they haven't, but that doesn't seem to be the case so far.

And if you drop that last part you'll have what I'm saying.

There is nothing suggestive so say they have learned anything, "launch titles" so to speak are always lower than once things get moving. Historically speaking they are on track with their previous book inflation. What they say is nothing more than a sales pitch based off not having enough writers to create more in less time right now.

Now they did go back to more 3rd over 4th style, and this includes releasing some free content. But 3rd had the same merchandising, licensing, and substantially more released content than 5th and it still made them a ridiculous amount of money. Business at it's root is only about profit, even being nice and offering free stuff is nothing more than investment for more money. Previews are created so you'll buy the book for even more superpowered PrCs like the one you seen (and details on those new feats!), open basic free adventures help you put on a couple of games to hook new players who will want more, timed and several new releases maintain interest in the base product. What I'm saying is, there are a lot of people like you that hope off hand comments by uninformed web page writers are true so you can believe in, and purchase, the product without ever realizing those comments are ran past a marketing team and specifically designed to lead you along just so you'd think that.

5th has a few problems in it's material already and you know production will increase when Faerun/Eberron comes up for printing, it's too soon to say WotC has learned anything but it's already to late to draw lines saying they haven't.

[Samwise]

Soro, I don't even know what you're disagreeing with any more.  All I'm saying is, it seems unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that 5th will suffer from the "1 book per month" problem that 3.5 and 4th did, without some kind of evidence.  I'm all for calling companies out on their bullshit when they claim to have learned their lesson and then immediately prove that they haven't, but that doesn't seem to be the case so far. 

To me, one book per 4 months that includes a 1st-15th level adventure, some character options, and presumably some kind of setting/fluff material seems absolutely reasonable.

Except I did cite evidence.
Not only their publication history for 3/3.5 and 4, but also their internal research.
And I've shown support for that with the lifespans of 3.5 and 4.

As for calling companies out, this is more calling out company supporters.
As it goes, I have a history of that too, having called them out on Gleemax throughout the lead up to 4E when they started spamming the 4E test books, aka Tome of Battle and Tome of Magic plus the 3.5 summary books, aka Magic Item Compendium and Rules Compendium, plus the "suspicious" reappearance of adventures after they had dissed them in the early days and near abandoning them after their initial 3E adventure path.
Never mind how those pretty much paralleled the release of the Players Option books in the dying days of 2nd ed, plus the Spell Compendiums and Encylopedia Magicas for that edition, or the edition-change adventures they released between AD&D 1st and 2nd edition.
Clearly it was rude of me to have played the game for so long and bring up such ancient history, and even worse to have learned to decipher corp-speak after experiencing the lie that there would be no interruption in the magazine schedule 3 months before the Christmas issue never showed up because TSR went bankrupt and translate that over to a statement that they had 3.5 products planned to the end of the year with nothing said about the end of the next year, and oh look! Pretty "4dventure Banners" six months later at GenCon. Coincidence I guess. Or maybe I just cast an epic level divination to see into the future. 
And don't get me started on the people who refused to accept that those fabulous 4E online tools were doomed to be vaporware despite the 3E tools being vaporware and even the 2nd ed Core Rules CD-rom getting released the day before they announced 3E. (Or was it the month before? Either way, they knew it was obsolete when they announced it.)

So when you say I am "unreasonable" to make that jump - 36 years of history versus a one year design failure followed by a six month printing failure followed by a six month slow schedule pretty much puts it on the fringe to expect they won't have the Splatbook of the Month Club up and running by the end of the year.
But feel free to ping me about it this time next year and I'll be happy to admit I was wrong if the club isn't going full speed.

[Samwise]

Oh . . .

Sorry to start a derail a thread about derailing. (Derailception?)
The point I was trying to make, without the discussion about WotC's business model, was:

A key factor in the structure of the rules for the various editions has been the intent of those editions modified by the egos of the designers.
That intent may not match the desires of players or DMs, and it very much affects the "balance" of the rules, particularly if their play environment is radically different from the play environment envisioned or desired by the designers.

In such a case the rules may be quite functional, just not for what you want to do with them.
Of course they can also still be quite broken because the designers just plain screwed up, which several have confessed.

[Captnq]

I wouldn't care if they released a book once a week, if it was good. My whole problem is if you want to make a new system, include all the old stuff, updated.

If they gave me say... 25% of the best of the best from 3.5 or 4th, I'd had been happy. But instead, they are selling me what I already have, and then going to sell me what I already bought, slightly different. The point of a new edition is to FIX things, not to repackage and resell the same thing.

[Raineh Daze]

I wouldn't care if they released a book once a week, if it was good. My whole problem is if you want to make a new system, include all the old stuff, updated.

If they gave me say... 25% of the best of the best from 3.5 or 4th, I'd had been happy. But instead, they are selling me what I already have, and then going to sell me what I already bought, slightly different. The point of a new edition is to FIX things, not to repackage and resell the same thing.

... you seem to be complaining that they're actually doing what you want. You want the old stuff, updated; then complaining that they're selling you old stuff updated.

[Captnq]

I wouldn't care if they released a book once a week, if it was good. My whole problem is if you want to make a new system, include all the old stuff, updated.

If they gave me say... 25% of the best of the best from 3.5 or 4th, I'd had been happy. But instead, they are selling me what I already have, and then going to sell me what I already bought, slightly different. The point of a new edition is to FIX things, not to repackage and resell the same thing.

... you seem to be complaining that they're actually doing what you want. You want the old stuff, updated; then complaining that they're selling you old stuff updated.

I want 25% of the stuff UPFRONT. I already paid for 100% of it. I want 25% of it IN THE CORE RULE BOOKS.

Not the bare minimum to play the game in the core rulebooks then dribble it out over the next 5 years. Don't keep selling the same stuff. Give me everything I already have, then dribble out NEW STUFF for the next five years.

[Raineh Daze]

I wouldn't care if they released a book once a week, if it was good. My whole problem is if you want to make a new system, include all the old stuff, updated.

If they gave me say... 25% of the best of the best from 3.5 or 4th, I'd had been happy. But instead, they are selling me what I already have, and then going to sell me what I already bought, slightly different. The point of a new edition is to FIX things, not to repackage and resell the same thing.

... you seem to be complaining that they're actually doing what you want. You want the old stuff, updated; then complaining that they're selling you old stuff updated.

I want 25% of the stuff UPFRONT. I already paid for 100% of it. I want 25% of it IN THE CORE RULE BOOKS.

Not the bare minimum to play the game in the core rulebooks then dribble it out over the next 5 years. Don't keep selling the same stuff. Give me everything I already have, then dribble out NEW STUFF for the next five years.

That would be the #1 way to ensure that they can never afford to give you new stuff, as well as giving everyone a heart attack by the sheer size of the core books.

[Captnq]

*stares a long time*

Yeah... So I guess the fact that I can boil 3.5 down into about... 6 books? (Note, I said fact, because I've actually done it.) means that there is NO market for publishing say, "The big book of races" with about say... 50 races in it, reballanced and remade for 5th?

No. According to you, the only way to make money is to trickle out about 3 or 4 races a book for the next 5 years, because they could NEVER write more after publishing the Big book of races.


Got it.

[Raineh Daze]

*stares a long time*

Yeah... So I guess the fact that I can boil 3.5 down into about... 6 books? (Note, I said fact, because I've actually done it.) means that there is NO market for publishing say, "The big book of races" with about say... 50 races in it, reballanced and remade for 5th?

No. According to you, the only way to make money is to trickle out about 3 or 4 races a book for the next 5 years, because they could NEVER write more after publishing the Big book of races.


Got it.

You're moving the goalposts a lot here. You said 'core rulebooks', not 'and now I introduce more books'. And you started with 'give' rather than 'sell'.

It's gone from 'give me the stuff I already have for the new ruleset' to 'sell me the same stuff again, just changing the way the books are organised'.

[Captnq]

*stares a long time*

Yeah... So I guess the fact that I can boil 3.5 down into about... 6 books? (Note, I said fact, because I've actually done it.) means that there is NO market for publishing say, "The big book of races" with about say... 50 races in it, reballanced and remade for 5th?

No. According to you, the only way to make money is to trickle out about 3 or 4 races a book for the next 5 years, because they could NEVER write more after publishing the Big book of races.


Got it.

You're moving the goalposts a lot here. You said 'core rulebooks', not 'and now I introduce more books'. And you started with 'give' rather than 'sell'.

It's gone from 'give me the stuff I already have for the new ruleset' to 'sell me the same stuff again, just changing the way the books are organised'.

It would be core.

Lord, do I have to spell this out for you?

One book JUST THE RULES. as in, these are you rules on the rules. A rule book, as it were. That's got the stuff you aren't going to change or add too later.

Then One spell book. One feat book. One Class book. One race book. One magic item book. Of wait, we'd need a monster book. So that's seven books. Sorry.

You don't have to give me everything, but at least give me, say the top 25% of the last four editions. I want something to play with RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE.

Then make your splat books. Trust me, people won't go, "No no. the main spell book is enough". But I'd like to get more then the same tired list of Core Spells that I've been looking at for 5 editions now.

[Raineh Daze]

Whilst great from your perspective, that sounds terrible. Why? Well, aside from needing seven books all at once to get going, which is painful with WotC's prices, it sounds like an excellent way to make it impossible to introduce anybody to the system, since you have this enormous stack of books to look through.

[linklord231]

Seems like the solution to Captnq's problem is pretty simple:  Just pretend 5e hasn't officially launched yet.  Wait to buy it until it has all the content you "need," and then have a big launch day celebration for yourself. 

Would you be content with a 3.5 -> 5e conversion guide, so that you can use all of your old content?

[Unbeliever]

Seems like the solution to Captnq's problem is pretty simple:  Just pretend 5e hasn't officially launched yet.  Wait to buy it until it has all the content you "need," and then have a big launch day celebration for yourself. 

Would you be content with a 3.5 -> 5e conversion guide, so that you can use all of your old content?

This sort of thing would be very handy, although it is usually sort of terribly implemented.

I think he's a little hyperbolic about it, but Captnq has a point about the problems of "early adoption" with games like D&D.  That is, games that are splatbook dependent.  For a game like 5E -- which doesn't sound too much like my cup of tea anyway -- it's got a huge problem competing with the earlier edition(s).  I have a large set of rich character creation options in say 3E.  On release, though, 5E is going to seem very impoverished.  I'm going to be looking for my Duskblades and my Warlocks and they might or might not be there.  This requires the game system to be a lot better at its core to be attractive, I think.  And, that's not even taking into account the necessary start-up costs it takes for a gaming group to switch editions.

[Captnq]

Whilst great from your perspective, that sounds terrible. Why? Well, aside from needing seven books all at once to get going, which is painful with WotC's prices, it sounds like an excellent way to make it impossible to introduce anybody to the system, since you have this enormous stack of books to look through.

It might surprise you that the eventual goal of my EVD is to print it out. I have someone who will do it for 2 cents a page, if it's big enough.

Printing gets cheaper per page the more pages you put in it up to about 800 pages, then it reverses. A 500 page book is not that much more expensive then a 250 page book. An extra 2.50 at most.

Would I pay 75 for 640, as opposed to... 49.95 for 320? Yes. They'd make far more money per book, I'd get far more "core" and I'd be able to convince my players to try something new, if I had more to offer then, "HEY! It's all the core stuff from 10 years ago, WITH NEW RULES TO LEARN!!!"

But no. 5th edition has to compete with Incantatrix and Mystic Ranger and Erudite. Frankly, 3rd is more fun.

Here's a real world example:

Borderlands was fun.
Borderlands 2 is more fun.

Why? More choices. More adventure paths. and MORE GUNS.

The core without the DLCs had more then the original borderlands. So core BL2 was fun.

BL the Pre-Sequel? It feels like a step back. It's not so fun. It feels like less options.

5th edition is like BL: Pre-Sequel.

[Raineh Daze]

Whilst great from your perspective, that sounds terrible. Why? Well, aside from needing seven books all at once to get going, which is painful with WotC's prices, it sounds like an excellent way to make it impossible to introduce anybody to the system, since you have this enormous stack of books to look through.

It might surprise you that the eventual goal of my EVD is to print it out. I have someone who will do it for 2 cents a page, if it's big enough.

Printing gets cheaper per page the more pages you put in it up to about 800 pages, then it reverses. A 500 page book is not that much more expensive then a 250 page book. An extra 2.50 at most.

Would I pay 75 for 640, as opposed to... 49.95 for 320? Yes. They'd make far more money per book, I'd get far more "core" and I'd be able to convince my players to try something new, if I had more to offer then, "HEY! It's all the core stuff from 10 years ago, WITH NEW RULES TO LEARN!!!"

But no. 5th edition has to compete with Incantatrix and Mystic Ranger and Erudite. Frankly, 3rd is more fun.

I wouldn't. So what if it costs more in the long run? That's an enormous all at once expenditure and way too much crap for the core rules. I also don't find 3.5 more fun in any way that has to do with 3.5 rather than the actual games I'm in. There's more options, but most of the options are boring. <.<

Side note: 1800-2000 pages of core books is also a pain to carry around. The core rules as they are are heavy enough for me.*

*Based on the page count of all the 2E core stuff. 959 pages, give or take a few.


And you're ignoring the part about how hard it is to introduce people to something when there's that much stuff to go through. I know people IRL who're interested in playing D&D, but would give up if I dropped what's essentially nothing more than lists of statblocks in front of them. It might make it more attractive to migrate over if you're used to having all the 3.5 content available, and want to keep it, but it's a bit much up front.

Plus, with the way things are organised right now--AKA not at all--at least I only need one book to introduce people to the system. The PHB.

[Unbeliever]

But no. 5th edition has to compete with Incantatrix and Mystic Ranger and Erudite. Frankly, 3rd is more fun.

Here's a real world example:

Borderlands was fun.
Borderlands 2 is more fun.

Why? More choices. More adventure paths. and MORE GUNS.

I think this is actually a bad analogy.  Or, possibly a counterexample, even.  I thought you were saying that later editions/iterations should include at least the "greatest hits" of earlier editions.  So, 4E or 5E should start, pretty much from the outset, with say Incantatrix, Mystic Ranger, and Erudite.  Or, at least stuff like them.

But, BL2 actually kind of proves the opposite point.  Sure, BL2 has a Siren, but there's no sense that Lilith and Maya have the same power set -- their action skills are quite different, and while there's some overlap there's no way anyone would call Maya just Lilith 2.0.  Ditto Axton and Roland.  Salvador and Brick are similar-ish, except, not really at all other than being beefy. 

Instead, the BL2 example simply shows, maybe, that a greater number of options is, according to Captnq, better.  It doesn't really tell you anything about "repeats" from the previous editions. 

On the other hand, though, BL2 probably doesn't even show that.  BL2 was a great game prior to the Mechromancer and the Psycho, the only 2 classes it added to the game.  Setting them aside, it's not like it had all that much more content that we'd label "character creation" as compared to its predecessor.  It still had a handful of classes, I think the skill trees all had the same amount of numbers to it, and it had a whole 1 new elemental damage type (slag).  Maybe it had more guns, but when the number is nigh infinite to begin with, that's a trivial difference.  Perhaps there was a marked uptick in the number of legendaries in the game, I don't know. 

Now that we're making the comparison, BL2 just shows that you need some minimal level of options -- you need all the classes to have multiple, engaging, viable builds, supported by equipment or whatever tools the game gives you.  And, that those options just should be better than what came before.  BL2 is, at most, a slight increase in variety of options, from a raw numbers perspective, than BL1.  But, it made a great many of those options much more engaging and awesome. 

So, if I'm going to take the move from BL1 to BL2 as a leading example, I'd say this.  Say 3E D&D has 1000 options.  Successor editions don't need to have nearly that many.  But, if they have some critical number, like 50 or whatever, really good options, then that would easily fit the BL2 model. 

My point here is that I don't think more = good is necessarily supported by this example.  And, as Raineh Daze points out, there are costs to vast amounts of stuff -- decision paralysis, cumbersomeness, game balance, etc. 

One place where I do find it jarring, and something that D&D in particular has been kind of bad about is if there was an archetype that was reasonably well-supported in previous iterations that is absent from the new one.  If I could make a cool Swashbuckler (or shapeshifter or blaster or assassin ...) in edition X, and if that archetype is a fairly classic or obvious one, I get jarred when I can't make one in edition X+1. 


P.S.:  the game(s) could really be organized in a way that is much more user-friendly to veterans and new players alike.