Quote from: CRKrueger;914534It was more like...
Hasbro: Kill the OGL, people other than us are making money.

Based on everyone I've talked to and everything I've seen, I don't think Hasbro had anything to do with it. Dancey's original plan for 3E was:

1. Get WotC out of the supplement / adventure business (and have the rest of the industry fill those shoes).

2. Produce core-extension "evergreen" products that could be sold in perpetuity and would support a new penumbra of supplemental material.

3. Release D20-compatible games to further extend and capitalize on the network effect.

Three key things happened:

1. WotC's internal culture pushed back on a plan that was basically looking to downsize the development staff because they were, after all, a bunch of developers.

2. The Epic Level Handbook and Psionic Handbook, the first two "evergreen" products, were both poorly designed and collapsed.

3. D20 Star Wars was not only poorly designed but set an incredibly bad template by breaking too much compatibility with the D20 core.

Once Dancey left WotC, the internal culture turned completely against the OGL and the marketing/design strategy it was supposed to be supporting. 3.5 was very transparently designed to break compatibility and enable WotC to re-release their splatbook supplements as full-color hardcovers that could compete in the open market against 3rd party products. This coincided with the evergreen products disappearing and the decision not to add any additional material to the SRD. And the company abandoned basically all plans to continue developing D20 games.

Quote from: Omega;915062True. But this was the translation group that had done 3rd and 4th. (Not sure who did O, BX, A and 2nd?) Though it wasnt just Japan. All translation groups were denied.

This. It's not a matter of obscure contractual reasons, it's just a flat NO to all foreign companies willing to publish D&D5 in other languages.

I made a quick search on the internet and found this, it's an announcement by Devir Iberia (a subsidiary of Devir), stating that WotC decided not to license D&D5 in other languages. In Spanish:

https://www.facebook.com/deviriberia/posts/902799903067822

Quote from: Teodrik;914326Curious, and I dont really know the backstory here. Could you elaborate on how the purple site had an effect on 4e being thrown under the bus by WotC?

I don't think that rpgnet caused WoTC to throw 4e under the bus. 4e was a shitty edition that wasn't really D&D, and that's WHY rpgnet embraced it. It was dumped by WoTC because it was a shitty edition that wasn't really D&D, or more accurately due to the fact that because it was a shitty edition that wasn't really D&D it had terrible terrible sales.

Quote from: Doom;914376I dunno, 4e died SO fast, though.

Again, it didn't die so fast because WoTC decided to kill it; it's the other way around: it's sales were so horrible, and 4e essentially lost 2/3rds of D&D's customer base, so WoTC first tried to release Essentials as a hail-mary move to see if it would revive the franchise, and when that failed miserably because the problem was the shitty, shitty system (a system designed based on the ideas of people who despised D&D in the first place), they scuttled it altogether.

Then they went to get the advice of people with exactly the opposite ideas of those who they had been listening to while designing 4e. That's why 5e was a massive, massive success.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;914380Opening sales weren't the issue--the first print run, which was larger than 3E's, sold out in pre-order.

That was the key: 4e sold well before anyone had the chance to actually read it. Only a few of us had sufficient understanding of what was going on to realize it was going to be a disaster even before the release, most gamers just 'have' to get the new edition.

Quote from: Skull;914778I don't see the fascination with sales compared to the past. What matters is the now, and D&D5e is doing fine.

I don't even care what sales are now. I think this hobby would do just fine if the commercial side of it was flushed right down the toilet.

Quote from: Claudius;914983D&D3 and D&D4 were translated into several languages. There is no foreign version of D&D5, and apparently this is not due to a lack of interest of foreign companies in translating D&D5, but to a deliberate decision of WotC. Why? WotC has given no explanation.

The Spaniards are pretty frantic about how there isn't even a Spanish translation of 5e yet.

Ironically, in south america people don't care very much because they all just use the English books. That might be part of the reason why there isn't one yet, for that matter.

Quote from: RPGPundit;916146(a system designed based on the ideas of people who despised D&D in the first place)

OK, two things.  First, I have to ask, if that's why 4e failed, then why did 1e-2e AD&D do so well?  Both editions were made and published by people who hated D&D.  And second, Mike Mearls hates D&D?  Really?  This is news to me.  He had a big hand in making 4e.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;916156OK, two things.  First, I have to ask, if that's why 4e failed, then why did 1e-2e AD&D do so well?  Both editions were made and published by people who hated D&D.  And second, Mike Mearls hates D&D?  Really?  This is news to me.  He had a big hand in making 4e.

4es advertising is probably what he means. Some of them were pretty negative to AD&D, BX, etc. Its that negative advertising that turned some away.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;916156OK, two things.  First, I have to ask, if that's why 4e failed, then why did 1e-2e AD&D do so well?  Both editions were made and published by people who hated D&D.  And second, Mike Mearls hates D&D?  Really?  This is news to me.  He had a big hand in making 4e.

Regardless of the attitudes of the design teams in both eras. The team in charge of AD&D after Gygax left still kept on using the same system. While AD&D 2e was a different edition it was more or less "cleaned up" version of AD&D. Modules and supplements were easily used in between them as well as with BECMI D&D.

With D&D 4e in contrast, all pretense of compatibility was dropped. Pundit claims it because the designers hated classic D&D and D&D 3.X, my opinion is the extreme example of what happen when somebody who wants to "fix" D&D to make it better has a free hand and that designer narrowly focuses on that vision to exclusion of all.

That type of product can work but not for a publisher aiming to maximize their share of the market. RPGs always been a swiss army knife especially D&D. D&D 4e has specific vision of how to play an RPGs and that vision doesn't appeal as widely as classic D&D and 3.0 did.

Quote from: Omega;9161684es advertising is probably what he means. Some of them were pretty negative to AD&D, BX, etc. Its that negative advertising that turned some away.

The thing is, 3rd Edition advertising was also negative at spots. And 4E's initial ads were actually hardest on 3E. I think there were missteps, but it had more to do with using the same style in a much different environment, and going for dramatic changes when the market was moving in a more conservative direction.

Quote from: RPGPundit;916147That was the key: 4e sold well before anyone had the chance to actually read it. Only a few of us had sufficient understanding of what was going on to realize it was going to be a disaster even before the release, most gamers just 'have' to get the new edition.

To be fair, Wizards was very forthright about what 4E would look like via the Wizards Presents: Races and Classes and Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters books, which were released well in advance of 4E's Core Rulebooks being released (specifically, the two books came out in December of 2007 and January of 2008, respectively). Both books were very forthcoming regarding the changes that were made, and went into some detail about the how's and why's. True, the reasoning was slanted (in that it went on at length about why these changes were "better"), but it put 4E's nature front-and-center for any who cared to look before the edition formally debuted.

Quote from: RPGPundit;916147That was the key: 4e sold well before anyone had the chance to actually read it. Only a few of us had sufficient understanding of what was going on to realize it was going to be a disaster even before the release, most gamers just 'have' to get the new edition.

Raises hand.

I bought the 3 4e core books sight unseen because of course I was going to get them, it was the new edition of D&D. Then I got home and opened them up and was: "huh?...wha?..." I suspect the initial strong sales were driven by quite a few people like me.

Quote from: estar;916173That type of product can work but not for a publisher aiming to maximize their share of the market. RPGs always been a swiss army knife especially D&D. D&D 4e has specific vision of how to play an RPGs and that vision doesn't appeal as widely as classic D&D and 3.0 did.

Pretty much this. I really like 4E. I only started playing it once the D&D Next playtest was in full swing, so I wasn't emotionally invested in its success or failure. The game does what it sets out to do - provide an engaging and carefully calibrated fantasy tactical system - very well. And the Essentials line is the best-presented RPG in terms of ease of use at the table that I've ever played. By far.

But it's a system that A) Offers a fundamentally different experience from traditional D&D, and B) Is far less flexible in the kind of game you play with it than traditional D&D. Commercially, 4E was a huge gamble, and a huge fail. Doesn't make it a bad game. IMHO, if it had been marketed by a different company with a different name, it would be highly regarded in the hobby.

Quote from: Haffrung;916206Pretty much this. I really like 4E. I only started playing it once the D&D Next playtest was in full swing, so I wasn't emotionally invested in its success or failure. The game does what it sets out to do - provide an engaging and carefully calibrated fantasy tactical system - very well. And the Essentials line is the best-presented RPG in terms of ease of use at the table that I've ever played. By far.

But it's a system that A) Offers a fundamentally different experience from traditional D&D, and B) Is far less flexible in the kind of game you play with it than traditional D&D. Commercially, 4E was a huge gamble, and a huge fail. Doesn't make it a bad game. IMHO, if it had been marketed by a different company with a different name, it would be highly regarded in the hobby.

   It does have high regard among those who like what it tried to do. I think it's a good game that had parameters that could have worked, but suffered from being done at the wrong time and got hit by a whole bunch of other problems.

   The feeling I got from 4E, following it all the way through the promotion and launch, was that it was trying to a) freshen up the game and b) be the kind of game that people who were sold on it in the fantasy boom of the early- to mid-80s thought they were getting. The problem was, they ran up against a market that wanted D&D to be familiar, and was showing a resurgence of interest in how the game was played and experienced by the initiates in the mid-70s to mid-80s.

   When you combine that with all the other problems it had--requiring heavy investment at the start of the Great Recession, the collapse of DDI, the problems of H1 and the deeper problems it symbolized (a good number of design staff didn't get the game), the alienation of many fans with the withdrawal of licenses, the fact that the core books and many early supplements ranged from difficult-to-read to downright dry, the immediate startup of a competitor who could tap into both compatibility and the hobby's consistent anti-establishment sentiments--it's almost a wonder the game held on as long as it did.

   Most of the complaints I see nowadays are those who think it's not close enough to traditional D&D, those who dislike the heavy investment and slower pace, and Pundit, who is sui generis and whose arrogance and wrath may well be inflamed by sinister preternatural influences.