When I first heard that Hasbro would be bankrolling D&D in the future, I had this funny product in my head.  I still think it's a pretty neat idea:

Get your product next to action figures.  Essentially, you sell D&D a character at a time.  The bubble pack includes an action figure in 3.5" scale, the same guy in miniature scale, his stat block and whatever reference cards you need.  The toy line would essentially be a battle game where friends pit their figures against each other using the basic D&D rules (obligatory giant monsters come later at huge cost).  Instead of including a mini-comic with the toy (as some action figures used to do), you get a little book with his/her background and a solo adventure.

And that would be how they get the roleplaying game in.  The adventure needs a DM and you need the more complete rules to play those.

Still sounds like a good idea to me.  Maybe we'll see something like it in 5e

Quote from: ggroy;374431There's also the scenario where Hasbro takes the tabletop rpg D&D game off the market for several years to more than a decade, and shelves it.  Such an extreme scenario would imply almost-zero revenue coming in from the tabletop D&D rpg.  The only D&D revenue left, would be from non-tabletop rpg sources like publishing D&D based novels and whatever other stuff which still uses the D&D logo and trademark (ie. video games, movies, cartoons, etc ...).

Exactly.

I don't subscribe to Frank's doom and gloom scenario; I don't think Essentials is the new edition. I do think WotC's worried, and I do think 4e hasn't sold as well as they would have liked. Hasbro doesn't have any experience with the tabletop RPG model of continual new revisions.

4e's designed as an exception based system. This means you can revise the feel of the game pretty extensively without futzing with the core rules, just as they've done with Magic for the last X revisions. The trick is that Magic has a built in mechanism for aging out old content. Without that, it's harder to change the way the game plays. D&D doesn't have anything like that.

You could, in theory, implement something along those lines for RPGA play. But... WotC just let go of the RPGA reins; the rules for RPGA character creation are now in the hands of the volunteer global admins. So there's not going to be any weird change there.

Essentials could (and I emphasize could) be a move in that direction, on the assumption that the people who come to D&D through Essentials will not immediately use the other material. But we won't know till we see the set.

D&D Encounters is not a move in that direction.

With respect to the 4E Essentials line, the question is:  who exactly is the target audience?

Offhand, I don't see TSR edition grognards as being a huge audience for it.  Many grognards have already written off 3E/3.5E/Pathfinder and 4E a long time ago.

I also don't see hardcore 3E/3.5E/Pathfinder players as the main audience for it either.  Some have tried 4E already, and don't think it is their cup of tea.

The 4E Essentials line is probably not likely to change the minds of these two groups.

So who's left?

There's a potential audience of lapsed D&D players who have not played any tabletop rpg games in over 15 or 20+ years.  The design of the upcoming 4E "
red box" set copying the older Mentzer basic D&D "red box" set format, is perhaps suggestive that WotC may be attempting to attract such "lapsed" players.

Such lapsed players, would probably be over age 30 today.  Lapsed players who were in high school or college when the Mentzer basic D&D "red box" set was first released, would be in their 40's today.

How successful this will be in attracting lapsed players over age 30, is difficult to say at this point.

Quote from: Thanlis;374433Exactly.

I don't subscribe to Frank's doom and gloom scenario;

I don't know what you think my "Gloom and Doom" scenario is. WotC announced that they have 1.5 million players and there are 24 million "lapsed" players - people who bought D&D at some point but did not buy the current edition. I don't know their statistical methodology, and I don't know if I can trust those numbers. But I think it's obvious that they think they could do better. Because the positive spin they put on that was that there were a lot of D&D players out there they could attract to their current products if they struck the right marketing note.

What's important for the future of this edition and the direction of the next edition is not the objective facts. We don't even know the objective facts. What's important is what the people calling the shots think is going on. And it's obvious that they don't think the current direction is going well, because they canceled the DMG 3. The figures they are quoting say that they could be doing 16 times better than they currently are (I don't know that this is true, but that is what they said). They are committing themselves to a major new direction in the coming months. The canceled the DMG 3, they canceled Arcane Power 2, they said they aren't making any more hardcover 4e D&D books, and they relabeled even their dice sets and dungeon tiles as "D&D Essentials" materials.

It seems clear to me that Hasbro is not satisfied with "1.5 million players." They are going to want more than that. I don't know how many more than that would be enough to prevent even bigger direction changes in the coming year. But if they decide that numbers are going down, you can expect heads to roll. Because it's a corporation, and it likes making money. And they announced that they believe that they have a right to twenty million players or more and that they currently have one point five. That means that they think the current design team or art staff (or both) is failing them at the bottom line level.

D&D Essentials has to provide positive numbers compared with 4e D&D as-is to keep from getting hit with the drastic changes stick. Because the numbers 4e is currently putting up are not enough to stave off the drastic changes stick.

-Frank

Quote from: ggroy;374435So who's left?

There's a potential audience of lapsed D&D players who have not played any tabletop rpg games in over 15 or 20+ years.  The design of the upcoming 4E "red box" set copying the older Mentzer basic D&D "red box" set format, is perhaps suggestive that WotC may be attempting to attract such "lapsed" players.

Such lapsed players, would probably be over age 30 today.  Lapsed players who were in high school or college when the Mentzer basic D&D "red box" set was first released, would be in their 40's today.

How successful this will be in attracting lapsed players over age 30, is difficult to say at this point.

Yeah. But also new gamers. From Ampersand:

QuoteWhile the current format of the Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game is great for those of us who have been playing the game for years (or even decades!), we knew that we needed to take a shot at making the products more accessible to the next generation of gamers. For this reason, we're introducing the Essentials line of products later this year.

The cover is a nod to lapsed players. But that's a freebie -- it won't harm the product in the eyes of the core product market. What it might do: stir the nostalgia of people who played 30 years ago. "Hey, I liked that as a kid... I should get it for my children."

Essentials is way more about expanding the audience than anything else.

Quote from: Thanlis;374429There's a funny scenario where 5e is in fact 3e, from WotC, in new trade dress. But I don't know that WotC would really want to do that, even if the numbers made it look good.

The only scenario where I can see WotC seriously doing something like this, is if Pathfinder becomes really big and WotC wants to "get back" some of that crowd by releasing an official "3.75E" masquerading as a 5E D&D.

If WotC is really intent on destroying Pathfinder before it becomes a huge legitimate market threat to D&D, this year 2010 would be the time to establish the footwork in creating a "3.75E" that is going to be masquerading as 5E D&D.

They would also most likely create a DDI character builder for "3.75E".

Quote from: FrankTrollman;374438I don't know what you think my "Gloom and Doom" scenario is. WotC announced that they have 1.5 million players and there are 24 million "lapsed" players - people who bought D&D at some point but did not buy the current edition.

At least some of those lapsed players are still actually playing D&D, just not versions of D&D WOTC sells anymore (because they stupidly took the PDFs of older editions material off the market). They had a nearly overhead-free revenue stream from older material as PDFs and tossed it away for reasons that really make no sense.

Quote from: RandallS;374442At least some of those lapsed players are still actually playing D&D, just not versions of D&D WOTC sells anymore (because they stupidly took the PDFs of older editions material off the market). They had a nearly overhead-free revenue stream from older material as PDFs and tossed it away for reasons that really make no sense.

According to the stakeholder report that Steve Jackson released a month or so ago, pdfs do pretty well for them. From my own direct experience with Catalyst, pdfs really weren't doing it at all until Adam Jury successfully lobbied for a massive price cut. The pdf copies sold way more at $10 than at $20-30. To the point that the company made more money over all.

But we're still talking small total numbers. Steve Jackson ha a nice model where he pays out a 25% royalty on pdf sales, and the authors get zero dollars up front, and then some pdf authors make out like bandits and others don't, and it's all almost risk free from Steve Jackson's perspective. And I really respect that model, and I think it should be copied elsewhere. Combining Adam's low price point sales pitch and Steve's royalties-only pay schedule, and I think you have a very valid business model. But remember, we are talking about hundreds of books. WotC said in court that they had direct evidence of 1210 illegal downloads of the PHB2 and that there were  at least 10 illegal downloads for each legal pdf sale. They could have been lying to a United States Judge, or fudging numbers based on some piracy study in the past. But they certainly implied that they had in fact sold 121 legit pdf copies of the PHB2. Considering the numbers that pdf-only copies of Shadowrun sourcebooks were putting up at the time, that seems pretty plausible.

So when they are running around with their hair on fire concerned about how many million customers their products are reaching, shutting down a side gig that is reach a couple hundred customers seems pretty reasonable. I mean, I believe firmly that the pdf market is a valid business undertaking, and that it will only continue to expand in importance as e-readers become better, cheaper, and more ubiquitous. But I can easily see the pdf market taking the blame for poor sales in other areas. If WotC was trying to explain to management why they were getting to 1.5 million people instead of ten times that, "illegal downloads" seems like a pretty safe thing to point the finger at.

TL;DR: I don't think that WotC should have taken down their pdf marketplace. But it makes sense to me that they did. I think they should have issued purely electronic copies of all of their books for 8 dollars or less a piece and try to sell hundreds of thousands of copies instead. But I wasn't surprised that they chose to shut the entire operation down rather than experiment with it.

-FRank

I dont think they cancelled DMG3 or Arcane Power 2 at all. Simply pushed back release...

The more radical the departure is from previous editions, the more fractured the player base are. WOTC have to be firm on what they intend to do. For 4e obviously they want newer players and hoped that old players will change to the new editions but with Pathfinder and retro-clones, not all old players went to 4e. So what's left? Newbies. Which the Essentials are supposed to do. Will lapsed players actually want to get 4e all of a sudden just because the presentation is nicer than the PHB?

Interestingly, in response to a post by GGROY over on ENWORLD Chris Pramas had this to say:

                Originally Posted by ggroy
 Fast  forward to the present, WotC  probably now sees the DDI  character builder as a very useful "weapon in their arsenal" for  tightly controlling the use of their D&D intellectual property,  without ever having to make a strict 3PP license.

Pramas:

     I'm guessing they are much more concerned about  another unintended side effect of DDI: the strangling of their own book sales. This  has become a real problem for WotC.


Makes me wonder if the next edition will try to regain sls in the book market, or give up on it entirely, and focus on the DDI and Cards.

Instead of releasing new books, they will just release new power cards for each 10 levels (ie. heroic, paragon, epic)?

The first power cards released will be boring run-of-the-mill powers, feats, etc ...  Subsequent power cards will feature more and more powerful abilities, in an arms race?

WOTC mostly focuses on crunch, which is easier to handle on a software and everybody know they aren't that good in fluff department. They could move to a crunch software and fluff book model. No matter what, fluff has to be in book form. No one likes reading huge text from the screen.

The Essentials doesn't point to a DDI inclined model. So maybe they are trying to get back to their roots? DDI is needed and sworn upon by 4e fans due to the massive amount of crunch that simply a software is much better to handle it than a human. Whenever a newbie wants to get in to 4e, he always gets pointed to getting a DDI subscription instead of buying this and that book, save the core.

Personally, I would point a new player to Pramas's Dragon Age which is IMO, the best introductory fantasy rpg currently.

Quote from: ggroy;374464Instead of releasing new books, they will just release new power cards for each 10 levels (ie. heroic, paragon, epic)?

The first power cards released will be boring run-of-the-mill powers, feats, etc ...  Subsequent power cards will feature more and more powerful abilities, in an arms race?

In that case, they should just focus on making a full blown CCG.. wait, they do. I think WOTC should just stop trying to make rpgs what they aren't and trying to step on other game's shoes. It's good they are rolling back minis and just using tokens for the Essentials. If someone loves minis, they would have gone to Warhammer already.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;374457Makes me wonder if the next edition will try to regain sls in the book market, or give up on it entirely, and focus on the DDI and Cards.

Some advantages to 5E D&D being DDI-only without any books:

- no middleman (ie. subscription cash goes directly to WotC)
- errata can be updated quickly
- new crunch can be incorporated into character builder quickly
- better idea of revenue flows via subscription/cancellation patterns

Disadvantages to 5E D&D being DDI-only without any books:

- alienate the old timers, who want to have books
- no revenue from players who don't use a computer
- no revenue from people who are book "completionists", who don't like pdfs or rpg computer software
- fluff can be annoying to read on a computer screen
- endless criticism for abandoning the paper book market

Fifth Edition?

You guys are focusing too much on the online side of things.

When I see the phrase "look like" I think of packached or books in retail store or similiar place.

IF there is ever a Fifth Edition DUNGEONS & DRAGONS in the future - I predict it will be a shrinkerapped combination of hardback plus 4 to 6 miniatures included that are done in HEROSCAPE style and scale. That way they can merge two lines intoi one or overlap them.

- Ed C.

Quote from: ggroy;374498Disadvantages to 5E D&D being DDI-only without any books:

- alienate the old timers, who want to have books
- no revenue from players who don't use a computer
- no revenue from people who are book "completionists", who don't like pdfs or rpg computer software
- fluff can be annoying to read on a computer screen
- endless criticism for abandoning the paper book market

- going more directly up against MMOs, Blizzard etc. which strikes me as a great way to get sunk

I think a 5th edition has gotta have some physical material attached. If they are wise they'll have better DDI, iPhone/iPad interfaces, etc., but they're gonna want to sell chits and maps and books too.