TheRPGSite

http://www.livingdice.com/5870/an-open-letter-to-save-3rd-party-dungeons-and-dragons-companies/

The money quote:

"On Friday, February 25th, I received a phone call from a writer experienced in 4th Edition wishing to produce his product. He had previously been tied to another major publisher that had recently dropped its 4th Edition lineup in favor of Paizo's Pathfinder which they claim had been growing in sales to the extent of surpassing their 4th Edition products. This is not an isolated incident but only the latest symptom, following in the wake of similar announcements from Mongoose and Goodman Games. For all intents and purposes, despite declarations from fanboys on both sides about whether Pathfinder or D&D is the better seller, it is now glaringly obvious that from the 3rd party publisher outlook, the winner has been decided."

At the end of the day I stick with my opinion. D&D 4E is like David Fincher's "Seven": you had to know the whole story before commenting, but you needed only five minutes to understand that it wouldn't end well.

Quote from: Reckall;444827http://www.livingdice.com/5870/an-open-letter-to-save-3rd-party-dungeons-and-dragons-companies/

The money quote:

"On Friday, February 25th, I received a phone call from a writer experienced in 4th Edition wishing to produce his product. He had previously been tied to another major publisher that had recently dropped its 4th Edition lineup in favor of Paizo's Pathfinder which they claim had been growing in sales to the extent of surpassing their 4th Edition products. This is not an isolated incident but only the latest symptom, following in the wake of similar announcements from Mongoose and Goodman Games. For all intents and purposes, despite declarations from fanboys on both sides about whether Pathfinder or D&D is the better seller, it is now glaringly obvious that from the 3rd party publisher outlook, the winner has been decided."

At the end of the day I stick with my opinion. D&D 4E is like David Fincher's "Seven": you had to know the whole story before commenting, but you needed only five minutes to understand that it wouldn't end well.

Wow, I'm sort of blown away by the sentiment in this proposal:

QuoteTALK ABOUT US
Simply put, with the many blogs and official press releases WOTC issues, reserve a section to mention the products being released by third-party companies.

...which amounts to "give us free advertising."  WotC spends their advertising dollars promoting their own product, as any company with something to sell does.  Why should they give freebies to 3rd party companies?  

Also, this:

QuoteREWARD US
Although there are perhaps dozens of products that may not reach your level of quality, if one does come about, acknowledge them. Perhaps even special awards dedicated to only 3rd party products.

GIMME A TROPHY!!!  Seriously, did this guy not get hugged enough as a child?

The comments are pretty good below the letter aswell(usually i avoid them but this time there actually pretty valid), they are abit overun with paizo fans though but tbh thats to be expected when you post such a pathetic open letter on a random site that will probably never be seen by anyone who will give a shit.

It sounds to me like he still wants to be in the 4E game and is offering some simple suggestions to Wizards that will help keep 3rd party publishers on board. My only question is how important 3rd party publishers are to the growth of 4E. If they don't impact wizard's sales, then his suggestions won't really matter. But I don't see a problem with him suggesting the changes.

Even given the ire WotC raises in me, I find the "you must mention our products on your page" thing fucking hilarious.

"Dear Ford, your service is too awesome, please tell people to come to our shop instead.  Love. AAMCO."

"Dear Democrats, you still have 2/3rds of the government under your party control, we have good stuff too, please tell people to register and vote Republican.  Yours, The Republican Party."

"Dear Trader Joe's.  Could you see your way to maybe mention that some of the stuff we sell here at Chamberlains is just as good if not a little less expensive than what you sell?  Friends 4 evar, Chamberlains."

...and so on.

No need to save WOTC or DD4e.  If everyone prefers Pathfinder, and PF is easier for 3pp, then that's what will get sales, players, and 3pp. Paizo carries the torch of OGL and tweaked a game most still appreciated while WOTC insulates itself with paranoia and greed; it's not hard to figure out this was going to happen.

You can peruse this forum and others with new publishers trying to control game mechanics, or adhere to old models, and it's a shame. Look at Posthuman Studios.  Look at Paizo.  This is how you succeed in the hobby market.  Smaller publishers can be successful, but you have to pay attention to how the enthusiasts are spending money, how to market your game, and what is working in the here and now.

The model is changing. Adapt or perish.

I am fairly certain WOTC will not adapt. This kind of market "correction" tends to be good for an industry.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Pathfinder fans are generally more aware of the broader industry and more likely to purchase third party products.

That is to say while I believe Pathfinder might be neck and neck or even pulling ahead some of the time, its very nature makes it more likely to draw sales for third party publishers.

This article reads like a last ditch attempt at grasping straws, before the company closes up shop and turns out the lights.

(Though I wonder if they will end up defecting eventually to the Pathfinder 3PP camp).


It sort of reminds of those articles/posts by Joseph Goodman talking about 4E D&D back in 2009, but with a more pessimistic tone.

http://wondrousimaginings.blogspot.com/2009/06/really-funny-comment-on-joe-goodmans.html

Quote from: trechriron;444834No need to save WOTC or DD4e.  If everyone prefers Pathfinder, and PF is easier for 3pp, then that's what will get sales, players, and 3pp. Paizo carries the torch of OGL and tweaked a game most still appreciated while WOTC insulates itself with paranoia and greed; it's not hard to figure out this was going to happen.

You can peruse this forum and others with new publishers trying to control game mechanics, or adhere to old models, and it's a shame. Look at Posthuman Studios.  Look at Paizo.  This is how you succeed in the hobby market.  Smaller publishers can be successful, but you have to pay attention to how the enthusiasts are spending money, how to market your game, and what is working in the here and now.

The model is changing. Adapt or perish.

I am fairly certain WOTC will not adapt. This kind of market "correction" tends to be good for an industry.

WoTc created this "new model" you're talking about with the OGL- and they also created their own largest competitor.  The reason Piazo exists is because WoTC accidentally left the door open and thier wallet on the kitchen table. I can't see how repeating this mistake is going to help them at all. Opening 4e up like they did 3e would almost certainly lead to the creation of yet another major competitor at the moment 5e is announced. Furthermore, Piazo has been a major player for what, like 3 or 4 years? It is way too early to tell if their model is going to be successful in the long term. For instance, how will they avoid the edition treadmill?

Quote from: Aos;444847For instance, how will they avoid the edition treadmill?

By adopting the "Call of Cthulhu" model of subsequent editions?

Threre's also the Palladium model, where they just keep on cranking out a zillion RIFTS splatbooks which can be used with the original RIFTS core book.

Yeah, if Pathfinder can get into Palladium mode it might really shake the foundations over at WotC.

5th edition, 6th edition, 7th edition all while Pathfinder holds to a single edition?  Yeah that would really be in Paizo's favor.

One aspect of the Palladium model is letting books go out of print for years and then reprinting them which has the advantage of building up new demand without having to do much new work.

Quote from: ggroy;444849By adopting the "Call of Cthulhu" model of subsequent editions?

Threre's also the Palladium model, where they just keep on cranking out a zillion RIFTS splatbooks which can be used with the original RIFTS core book.

Neither Chaosium nor Palladium really represent business models to emulate though; they have strong customer bases due to legacy, but those customer bases have little to no growth.

Quote from: David Johansen;444851Yeah, if Pathfinder can get into Palladium mode it might really shake the foundations over at WotC.

5th edition, 6th edition, 7th edition all while Pathfinder holds to a single edition?  Yeah that would really be in Paizo's favor.

One aspect of the Palladium model is letting books go out of print for years and then reprinting them which has the advantage of building up new demand without having to do much new work.

How will they shake things up- by going broke?  That'll show those assholes over at Wizards!

Better yet, they could follow the previous D&D model. Put out a functional, but somewhat reviled version of the game (2e), over issue splat books and let the brand idle for a few years and then release a new edition to a hungry audience (3e).  With 4e wotc  is already half way there.

Quote from: Aos;444847.....................exists is because WoTC accidentally left the door open and thier wallet on the kitchen table.....................

Accidentally?

There was no 'accidentally' about it at all.

Ryan Dancey did it intentionally back in 2000 and 2004.

So did a few other designers/writers of OGL/3.X D&D back in those years.  Go back and look at interviews of those guys - it was intentional.  If WotC ever screwed things up, there would always be a version of the Dungeons & Dragons that they created in 2000 available - thats the back door they gave themselves and gamers.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Aos;444855With 4e wotc  is already half way there.

Lol This is true

Quote from: Koltar;444856Accidentally?

There was no 'accidentally' about it at all.

Ryan Dancey did it intentionally back in 2000 and 2004.

So did a few other designers/writers of OGL/3.X D&D back in those years.  Go back and look at interviews of those guys - it was intentional.  If WotC ever screwed things up, there would always be a version of the Dungeons & Dragons that they created in 2000 available - thats the back door they gave themselves and gamers.


- Ed C.

Genius.

Quote from: ggroy;444849By adopting the "Call of Cthulhu" model of subsequent editions?

Threre's also the Palladium model, where they just keep on cranking out a zillion RIFTS splatbooks which can be used with the original RIFTS core book.

The former won't work. Call of Cthulhu doesn't operate on the same level of crunch that D&D does. Moreover, Call of Cthulhu is all about the splats and sourcebooks - you know, Secrets of Kentucky kind of stuff. And Chaosium is small.

Paizo is already operating on the zillion splatbook model. And it is bringing them short term growth. The problem is, there are only so many subjects they can write about.

They will do an edition reboot. It's only a matter of time.

Seanchai

Quote from: Aos;444854How will they shake things up- by going broke?  That'll show those assholes over at Wizards!

There's a far reach between creating a sustainable business model that recognizes the limitations of the market and going broke.  Now, if we added in be a batshit insane dipwad who doesn't keep up with technolgy and loves to alienate fans and writers, well you can go broke with that business model in anly market.

So yeah, there are things Palladium does they certainly shouldn't emulate.

Here's an instructive real-world example of what's happening.

January 2010 (http://thatsnotmysquid.com/blog/?p=198#content): Mongoose writer Gareth Hanrahan is laid off, after a 7 year contract with them. He wrote some of the best received product (e.g. the Traveller core book) and was one of the few people who could keep up the demands in word count. But BAM, laid off he gets.

So what does Gareth think he could do (in Jan 2010)?

QuoteSo, what are the next steps? (...) I’ve already got some freelancing lined up, and I’m actively looking for more work. The freelance market is vastly changed since I last went actively looking, back in 2003(!), but there’s still some work out there. I’m obviously going to keep my hand in the Traveller side of things, one way or another. I also hope to keep freelancing with Mongoose on various projects, although that’s all still up in the air right now.

Part of this will likely involve learning Pathfinder, as it seems to be the place to be for third-party supplements these days. I may also try to break back into D&D4e, but third-party sales there are notoriously poor.

Now head over to the comments section to this blog entry. The first comment reads:

QuoteMearls
12/01/2010 at 10:58 pm Permalink

Drop me an email and I will put your name into the WotC freelancer queue. It’s first name (Mike) dot last name at wizards dotcom.

...And now, 13 months later (March 2011), the situation seems to be this. Gareth is still actively freelancing, and also one of the new co-publishers of Dragon Warriors. Two things seem to have happened:

- He got several gigues with Pathfinder. In one of the Serpent Skull adventure path modules, he wrote the bestiary, an article on (jungle) traps, and what not. No 3PP output for PFRPG as far as I can tell.
- All is quiet on the 4E front. Nothing on DDI, nothing outside (3PP).

What does this tell us? That 3PP seems not the best avenue in the first place to get money (as an author) or get noted (by your audience), whether for 4E or Pathfinder.

Here we have one person who realized that 2010/2011 is no longer 2003. You want to do freelance work? Write for the company, pitch an article. The 3PP model seems very, very small scale indeed these days. Which is good for occasional writers, bad for those wanting to make a living.

I hate to be the one suggesting it, but the OP and those thumbing it seem to live in the past (around 2001).

Quote from: David Johansen;444863There's a far reach between creating a sustainable business model that recognizes the limitations of the market and going broke.  Now, if we added in be a batshit insane dipwad who doesn't keep up with technolgy and loves to alienate fans and writers, well you can go broke with that business model in anly market.

So yeah, there are things Palladium does they certainly shouldn't emulate.

But it doesn't seem that it's worked for Chaosium either.  Who is it working for? Milton Bradley, maybe?

Quote from: Windjammer;444866Here we have one person who realized that 2010/2011 is no longer 2003. You want to do freelance work? Write for the company, pitch an article. The 3PP model seems very, very small scale indeed these days. Which is good for occasional writers, bad for those wanting to make a living.

I hate to be the one suggesting it, but the OP and those thumbing it seem to live in the past (around 2001).

Oh, freelancing has dramatically changed, big time. In the 90's and up to around 2003, a freelancer could pull in 10k a year, more if it was a good year. Ten cents a word was easy to get, 25 cents was possible.

Nowadays, anything above 2k is pretty miraculous...there just aren't that many opportunities out there, and a penny a word, maybe three, is about the best you can manage.

Quote from: Windjammer;444866I hate to be the one suggesting it, but the OP and those thumbing it seem to live in the past (around 2001).

For sure he is. Even if Pathfinder is the "winner" in the "new generation war" we are still left with a market A) shrunk and B) divided. This means that in 2011 3PP have to write for a potential "pool" of buyers, not the "ocean" that 3E created in 2001. I guess that, today, becoming a 3PP it is simply not worth the risk.

Quote from: Windjammer;444866Here's an instructive real-world example of what's happening.

January 2010 (http://thatsnotmysquid.com/blog/?p=198#content): Mongoose writer Gareth Hanrahan is laid off, after a 7 year contract with them. He wrote some of the best received product (e.g. the Traveller core book) and was one of the few people who could keep up the demands in word count. But BAM, laid off he gets.

So what does Gareth think he could do (in Jan 2010)?

Gareth's January 2011 update.

http://thatsnotmysquid.com/blog/?p=292#content


The following excerpt is quite telling about Mongoose.

QuoteQuality, not Quantity:  I was successful at Mongoose primarily because I was able to produce lots of moderate-quality material on command on almost any topic. While that's useful, I need to aim higher. I must break myself of the mindset that the first draft has to be the final draft. When you're producing a book a month from scratch, there's no time for planning, editing, rewriting or anything other than getting words out as quickly as possible, but other companies don't work like that. Not everyone is Mongoose.

If I didn't know anything about how rpg books were written, I would have thought this was the MO of a crappy "hack" writer.

Quote from: Koltar;444856Accidentally?

There was no 'accidentally' about it at all.

Ryan Dancey did it intentionally back in 2000 and 2004.

Yeah, that's how it looks like. I also think it was a combination of business calculation and simple idealism.

Quote from: ggroyIf I didn't know anything about how rpg books were written, I would have thought this was the MO of a crappy "hack" writer.

The way the game industry operates creates mediocre products and burned-oud, cynical writers (c.f. GMS, Malcolm Sheppard). You can't develop high-quality, high-wordcount, well-tested content on the terms freelancers and salaried staff are given (tight deadlines, laughable reimbursement and no creative ownership). There are multiple ways out of this quagmire -- like reaching deeper into your pockets (WotC), abandoning the pretense of being professional game designers (various hobbyist and semi-hobbyist publishers), or abandoning the RPG market. But the model as it worked up to the mid-2000s is not working anymore.

[edit]That blog post reads disturbingly like the diary of a sweatshop grunt. Observe:

QuoteThe termination came with a month’s notice and a thank-you, nothing more. Such is the lot of the freelancer.

QuoteRemember those five million words? I own none of them. They’re all work for hire, and most of them are written for licensed games so they’re doubly not-mine.

QuoteIt was a year when ‘low orbit ion cannons’ were in newspaper headlines, when the roleplaying industry slouched and mutated, when people talked about twitter being an essential service even as the water pipes froze and burst.

Now that is some commentary on the society and economy we have created.
[/edit]

Quote from: David Johansen;444839I have a sneaking suspicion that Pathfinder fans are generally more aware of the broader industry and more likely to purchase third party products.

That is to say while I believe Pathfinder might be neck and neck or even pulling ahead some of the time, its very nature makes it more likely to draw sales for third party publishers.

Also, on this: I do not really see dedicated 4e fans clamouring for 3rd party support all that often. That part of the hobby either didn't take up 4e as readily as other groups (and some of that may be the inertia of already owning a lot of useful 3rd party stuff!), or they are happy with the content WotC is selling them. Neither of those possibilities are very good news for a 3rd party publisher.

Quote from: Aos;444847WoTc created this "new model" ... For instance, how will they avoid the edition treadmill?

They should have just stuck with that model. The GSL doesn't seem to be creating the same fervor or support the OGL/STL did.

3-4 years is a good indicator, at 5 years you've hit your "make it or break it" hump. I think we can look at Paizo's efforts and get a strong indication of where they're headed.

There's no need to avoid or embrace any "edition treadmill". Look at the market. Retro-clones abound. Retreads, redos, reformats, and other "re-" words are all over the place. You can play any edition you want, or several permutations of them with doses of various "new" or updated elements.

I don't see how the vast availability of different D&D editions or even the vast availability of other RPGs has even phased the popularity of Pathfinder. I can run any game at my local Game Day and have 2 - 4 stragglers (sometimes) or I can run a Pathfinder Organized Play and have a wait list. The current climate of the hobby doesn't seem to be changing the popularity of Pathfinder. I can't imagine another 5 editions of a dozen different games coming out would have any further affect on it.

I love the part of the letter referred to in the OP that it "isn't a threat" that he'll go out of business. I really, really don't think WotC gives a damn if he goes out of business. How can he threaten them with it?

Quote from: ggroy;444878http://thatsnotmysquid.com/blog/?p=292#content


The following excerpt is quite telling about Mongoose.
(...)
If I didn't know anything about how rpg books were written, I would have thought this was the MO of a crappy "hack" writer.

Yeah. I went on a rant about how disappointed I was with MongT High Guard over on TBP and Gareth flat out apologized.

The sad part is Gar has been one of my favorite designers, with many imaginative and well put together books. But I imagine that the process at Mongoose is not conducive to him producing his best. Hopefully, with his renewed commitment to quality, we'll be seeing some good stuff from him again.

Quote from: Aos;444854How will they shake things up- by going broke?  ...

Quote from: Aos;444855Better yet, they could follow the previous D&D model.,,

If, in your imagination, Paizo is going to go broke by supporting Pathfinder over the next even 5 years, then I applaud your imagination.  After all, I imagine the zombie apocalypse all the time when running those games. Your vibrant imagination must make for some interesting gaming! Especially when you can take the glaringly obvious and convince yourself of the entirely make believe, you my friend are gifted in every meaning of that term.

Seriously, they have already shaken things up. Past tense. You are currently experiencing the shaking things up part. Well, those of us paying attention are experiencing it. You however, may be stuck in some strange Bermuda Triangle of Oblivious or your game store exists in a dimension circa 1999. Although that might be cool. What I wouldn't give to take a joy ride back to those days!!

In fact your insistence that Paizo is not an example of a good publisher and really out of whack opinions on the current state of the industry kind of worries me. OK. OK.  Who's the current president of the united states?

*looks concerned yet hopeful*

Quote from: trechriron;444901They should have just stuck with that model. The GSL doesn't seem to be creating the same fervor or support the OGL/STL did.

3-4 years is a good indicator, at 5 years you've hit your "make it or break it" hump. I think we can look at Paizo's efforts and get a strong indication of where they're headed.

There's no need to avoid or embrace any "edition treadmill". Look at the market. Retro-clones abound. Retreads, redos, reformats, and other "re-" words are all over the place. You can play any edition you want, or several permutations of them with doses of various "new" or updated elements.

I don't see how the vast availability of different D&D editions or even the vast availability of other RPGs has even phased the popularity of Pathfinder. I can run any game at my local Game Day and have 2 - 4 stragglers (sometimes) or I can run a Pathfinder Organized Play and have a wait list. The current climate of the hobby doesn't seem to be changing the popularity of Pathfinder. I can't imagine another 5 editions of a dozen different games coming out would have any further affect on it.

If you think Pathfinder will enjoy the day in the sun forever, I have a bridge to sell you.

Pathfinder will have a new edition.  It's too big and too complicated not to.

As for the edition treadmill, I have yet to see a viable alternative to it.  Sure, free or extremely cheap retro-clones are kind-of, sort-of popular amongst older gamers.  How does that attract new, younger customers to avoid a shrinking market?  How does that make a company enough money?

The single edition theory works great for someone creating a game as a hobby that expects to make a little money on the side for a brief period of time.  It does not work at all for a long term going concern.

Quote from: Melan;444888[edit]That blog post reads disturbingly like the diary of a sweatshop grunt.

Within the context of the rpg industry, the lot of a Mongoose writer was the lot of the sweatshop grunt. During the relatively brief time I was a staff writer there, the minimum output was 128 pages a month, every single month. That sort of output left little to no time for rewriting of anything, and only the most basic of planning. Non-objectionably mediocre was about the best you could aim for there, unless you lucked into being assigned a project which dealt with themes you'd already started exploring in your previous work.

Quote from: Patrick Y.;444910Within the context of the rpg industry, the lot of a Mongoose writer was the lot of the sweatshop grunt. During the relatively brief time I was a staff writer there, the minimum output was 128 pages a month, every single month. That sort of output left little to no time for rewriting of anything, and only the most basic of planning. Non-objectionably mediocre was about the best you could aim for there, unless you lucked into being assigned a project which dealt with themes you'd already started exploring in your previous work.

Hmm, sounds familiar...

Quote from: Koltar;444856Accidentally?

There was no 'accidentally' about it at all.

Ryan Dancey did it intentionally back in 2000 and 2004.

So did a few other designers/writers of OGL/3.X D&D back in those years.  Go back and look at interviews of those guys - it was intentional.  If WotC ever screwed things up, there would always be a version of the Dungeons & Dragons that they created in 2000 available - thats the back door they gave themselves and gamers.


- Ed C.

And Ryan Dancey was shown the door.   How about the other people involved with the OGL/3.X?   Are they still with the company?

Probably not.  You get rid of idiots who make stupid mistakes that cost a company money

It's startling to me to see the posters in this thread whose attitude is that 3PPs are competition for WotC rather than value adders for its brand and higher-margin rulebook sales.

If that's really how it is, if that's the way they should expect to get treated, then I can't blame publishers for dropping their support.

Quote from: trechriron;444908If, in your imagination, Paizo is going to go broke by supporting Pathfinder over the next even 5 years, then I applaud your imagination.  After all, I imagine the zombie apocalypse all the time when running those games. Your vibrant imagination must make for some interesting gaming! Especially when you can take the glaringly obvious and convince yourself of the entirely make believe, you my friend are gifted in every meaning of that term.

Seriously, they have already shaken things up. Past tense. You are currently experiencing the shaking things up part. Well, those of us paying attention are experiencing it. You however, may be stuck in some strange Bermuda Triangle of Oblivious or your game store exists in a dimension circa 1999. Although that might be cool. What I wouldn't give to take a joy ride back to those days!!

In fact your insistence that Paizo is not an example of a good publisher and really out of whack opinions on the current state of the industry kind of worries me. OK. OK.  Who's the current president of the united states?

*looks concerned yet hopeful*

I'm sorry, but who the fuck are you talking to? You are sure as hell not responding to my posts, but perhaps to some imaginary boogyman you've created in your lard encased brain. You don't look concerned and hopeful, actually; you look like a self satisfied jerkoff who has stuffed his cheeks full of nuts. I suggest you make sure to chew thoroughly before swallowing, or perhaps get a mumps shot.

I think for a retroclone publisher Piazo has done very well for itself, but, unlike you, I don't think they are going to change the status quo in the long run, I could be wrong, but I'm not married to the idea, so that's okay.


What is this, anyway? We get them every now and then, these guys who are married to some company or other. Boy, anyone remember when Crossgen was going to change the face of comics? Or when White Wolf was going to push D&D out of the picture?

Quote from: Phillip;444926It's startling to me to see the posters in this thread whose attitude is that 3PPs are competition for WotC rather than value adders for its brand and higher-margin rulebook sales.

If that's really how it is, if that's the way they should expect to get treated, then I can't blame publishers for dropping their support.

I don't think they are competition under the GSL.

Quote from: Phillip;444926It's startling to me to see the posters in this thread whose attitude is that 3PPs are competition for WotC rather than value adders for its brand and higher-margin rulebook sales.

If that's really how it is, if that's the way they should expect to get treated, then I can't blame publishers for dropping their support.

Largely they are competition. Things like the Quintessential guides didn't sell D&D to prospective buyers, D&D sold prospective buyers on the Quintessential guides.

Quote from: Daedalus;444916And Ryan Dancey was shown the door.   How about the other people involved with the OGL/3.X?   Are they still with the company?

Probably not.  You get rid of idiots who make stupid mistakes that cost a company money

Yes, thanks, that was more or less my point.

Quote from: jgantsThe single edition theory works great for someone creating a game as a hobby that expects to make a little money on the side for a brief period of time. It does not work at all for a long term going concern.

The single edition theory also works great for a game company that sells games (plural) to players (plural) over generations (plural).

Considering that the bulk of the D&D line is actually books of fictions, one might look at how successful big fiction publishers work.

Some titles keep selling well and stay in print. At the same time, other works by the same authors and new works by new authors get their chance to join the long-run lists. Not only is there more than one "vampire romance" series, but there are plenty of other subjects on offer in a variety of styles.

This is the same sort of thing that I think some of Hasbro's other subsidiaries do, and that the overarching mega-corporation definitely does in a big, big way. It wants not just to sell something to some people but to sell lots of things to lots of people, keeping them customers from birth to earth.

Speaking at a great distance from OGL/3.x/PF/4e...

I thought that Pathfinder's long-term business model is basically to sell a certain type of adventure* to people who like to consume them. They're like Gillette: sell the handle cheap, then sell the blades forever.

If so, then there isn't nearly the need to resell corebooks and splatbooks as there is/was from 3.0 to 3.5 to 4.0 to Essentials.

*EDIT: "Adventure Paths", viz. rather linear & balanced sequences of challenges.

Quote from: Phillip;444937The single edition theory also works great for a game company that sells games (plural) to players (plural) over generations (plural).

Considering that the bulk of the D&D line is actually books of fictions, one might look at how successful big fiction publishers work.

Some titles keep selling well and stay in print. At the same time, other works by the same authors and new works by new authors get their chance to join the long-run lists. Not only is there more than one "vampire romance" series, but there are plenty of other subjects on offer in a variety of styles.

This is the same sort of thing that I think some of Hasbro's other subsidiaries do, and that the overarching mega-corporation definitely does in a big, big way. It wants not just to sell something to some people but to sell lots of things to lots of people, keeping them customers from birth to earth.

This is good sense. The only downside to this is, of course, you don't need a big stable of writers to pump out an evergreen product, so while the company might prosper, rpg designers will not.  Unless, of course, there is enough money in adventures, as Elloit, mentions, to keep a bunch of folks working, I would think you'd just hire a pack of editors, artists and layout folks to change up the presentation every decade or so- or maybe use an inhouse crew that is already in place, moving from product line to product line. I guess there would be additional opportunities for things like D&D 2199 or whatever as well.

Here's a recent tweet from my boss Grim

"Dear WotC, I'll do that job but I'm not moving to the US only to get fired next Xmas. I'll telecommute. :P"

In thoroughly British self depreciating humour I can say if wizards are calling in Postmortem they're fucking desperate!

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;444938Speaking at a great distance from OGL/3.x/PF/4e...

I thought that Pathfinder's long-term business model is basically to sell a certain type of adventure* to people who like to consume them. They're like Gillette: sell the handle cheap, then sell the blades forever.

This is similar to a monthly magazine or comic book model.

Though such a model can eventually break down if the number of buyers/subscribers falls too low.  One just has to see how many magazines have closed down over the last decade or so.

Quote from: jgants;444909The single edition theory works great for someone creating a game as a hobby that expects to make a little money on the side for a brief period of time.  It does not work at all for a long term going concern.

A single edition (or new "editions" that do not change much besides graphics. layout, and such and such to keep pace with "style" so to attract new gamers) are better for the hobby in the long run. Publishers who can't figure out a way to make money from that aren't really helping the hobby, IMHO.

Thanks to the OGL, however, the "D&D playing" hobby no longer needs a "big" publisher to survive and even flourish. So if the "D&D" official rules publishers all quit because they can't figure out how to make money long term supplying the hobby (instead of trying to lead the hobby down whatever path they currently think will make them the biggest profits for their corporate owners) that's their problem -- and not necessarily the hobby's problem.

Quote from: Daedalus;444916And Ryan Dancey was shown the door.   How about the other people involved with the OGL/3.X?   Are they still with the company?

Probably not.  You get rid of idiots who make stupid mistakes that cost a company money

Dancey did not make a mistake in backing the OGL, nor did he cost WoTC money. WoTC cost itself money by later rejecting the OGL. It's really not Dancey's fault that WoTC is getting boned for its own short-sighted mistakes.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;444951Dancey did not make a mistake in backing the OGL, nor did he cost WoTC money. WoTC cost itself money by later rejecting the OGL. It's really not Dancey's fault that WoTC is getting boned for its own short-sighted mistakes.

I don't know, there would be no Pathfinder without the OGL. I mean if Piazo is the threat we've all been led to believe, that would seem to be a pretty big deal.

Really, i think that Dancey and the OGL were good for the hobby in the short term, but less so for WotC.

Quote from: One Horse Town;444954Really, i think that Dancey and the OGL were good for the hobby in the short term, but less so for WotC.

I totally agree.

What the OGL sadly led to is a sense of entitlement from 3rd party publishers when 4e came along. Gravy trains don't last forever.

Weepy open letters, indeed.

I think, though, if you like 3.x or TSR style D&D the positive impact of the ogl is far from short term.

Quote from: Aos;444970I think, though, if you like 3.x or TSR style D&D the positive impact of the ogl is far from short term.

Maybe. Editions never truly die as long as you have material and enjoy the game.

If OGL stuff is still coming out in 5 years time, then i'll say it was an unqualified success.

Quote from: One Horse Town;444954Really, i think that Dancey and the OGL were good for the hobby in the short term, but less so for WotC.

No OGL scenario: probably a lot less third party support for D&D -> possibly less demand for the 3.x core books, but D&D can't be forked/cloned with impunity.

Then again, why would WotC have to worry about a fork/clone unless they turned D&D into something that alienated a large portion of the market?

And if they alienated a large portion of the market anyway, would an entirely different system have been able to consolidate a hold on the drop-outs? Against the quirks of 4e, for example, would Exalted, MRQ, or Warhammer 2e have looked relatively "classic"? And since they wouldn't be competing with OS clones, FantasyCraft, Conan OGL, would one of them have been able to reach a critical "network density" to seriously compete with 4e? Or it wouldn't even have had to be a fantasy game. Basically, we're talking about a replay of the AD&D 2e stumble.

Basically, I think that WotC made a conscious decision to wall off their garden with 4e's incompatibility and its licensing program. They didn't have to.

They also didn't have to make 4e into such a departure from broad-based tastes.

If instead they'd made a new set of corebooks with significant, but evolutionary changes, they still could have sold them all over again, and they wouldn't have faced a fork. But they probably couldn't have counted on a 4-5 year churn of resales. Instead, they could have done what Paizo appears to be doing. It's not something I'm personally attracted to, but it seems to be popular. That is: create multiple series of accessories in the form of adventures. (Heck, create custom miniatures for each specific adventure.)

With core rules revised every 5 years in an evolutionary fashion, on the one hand you don't get as much resale of the rules. But at the same time, you maintain a fair amount of compatibility across the adventure lines, meaning that people can jump into the game at any point, immediately become customers of your entire catalog of adventures, and keep buying them even while skipping one or two editions of the core.

I think this is somewhat similar to Chaosium. Note, although Chaosium has a history of screwups, I seem to recall reading that the big one was jumping into the CCG craze right before the crash.

Quote from: One Horse Town;444971Maybe. Editions never truly die as long as you have material and enjoy the game.

If OGL stuff is still coming out in 5 years time, then i'll say it was an unqualified success.

Fair enough, aside from the odd used item and/or hobbyist project, I've likely spent my last money on D&D related stuff for the foreseeable future.

So what would happen if Hasbro bought Piazo?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;444972Basically, I think that WotC made a conscious decision to wall off their garden with 4e's incompatibility and its licensing program.

Totally. Maybe because the competition that the OGL created outweighed the benifits? Which might have back-fired, of course - although we'll have to wait and see on that.

QuoteIt's not something I'm personally attracted to, but it seems to be popular. That is: create multiple series of accessories in the form of adventures.

Isn't that pretty much what the new license promotes over anything else?

Quote from: Aos;444974So what would happen if Hasbro bought Piazo?

If they did and turned Pathfinder into something many fans did not like, the OGL would allow another company (or the Pathfinder hobbyists) to fork the rules again. As most of the new rules in Pathfinder are open content as well, the game would not even have to change much.  This is the beauty of the OGL and open content rules, no company can screw the fans of the game by changing it unless said fans are willing to allow themselves to be so screwed.

Quote from: jgants;444909Pathfinder will have a new edition.  

And it'll be different enough from the current edition that a) people will "have" to buy it and b) they can re-sell you all the supplements they've already sold you.

Seanchai

And so it will come to pass someday that companies will understand that tabletop rpgs are most appreciated by hobbyists who have no desire to become blind consumers and the publishing of rpg material, while possibly providing a sustainable living for a few, will never provide that large pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Quote from: Aos;444974So what would happen if Hasbro bought Piazo?

Exactly what is happening to WotC after Hasbro bought them, I'd say.

Quote from: RandallS;444946A single edition (or new "editions" that do not change much besides graphics. layout, and such and such to keep pace with "style" so to attract new gamers) are better for the hobby in the long run. Publishers who can't figure out a way to make money from that aren't really helping the hobby, IMHO.

Congratulations, you just described every company in the industry.  None of them have figured out a way to keep a single edition in print for a long time and still make money.  Not a one.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;444984And so it will come to pass someday that companies will understand that tabletop rpgs are most appreciated by hobbyists who have no desire to become blind consumers and the publishing of rpg material, while possibly providing a sustainable living for a few, will never provide that large pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

You know, I'd jump into the 3PP racket if I could make enough money to keep my hobby self-supporting. It is really becomming a cottage industry.

Quote from: Aos;444953I don't know, there would be no Pathfinder without the OGL. I mean if Piazo is the threat we've all been led to believe, that would seem to be a pretty big deal.

Aos, it's spelled Paizo. Just so you know.

Quote from: Aos;444974So what would happen if Hasbro bought Piazo?

I would wager on it that won't happen. Even if Hasbro made a generous offer... Remember the Paizo gang was with WOTC, some even before Hasbro acquired WOTC, and they saw the effect on their jobs and careers that decision at WOTC made.

Quote from: danbuter;445003Aos, it's spelled Paizo. Just so you know.

You would be astounded at how comfortable I am in in my ignorance. Astounded.

Quote from: GameDaddy;445004I would wager on it that won't happen. Even if Hasbro made a generous offer... Remember the Paizo gang was with WOTC, some even before Hasbro acquired WOTC, and they saw the effect on their jobs and careers that decision at WOTC made.

I don't expect that it would happen; it's just this had tuned into a thread of crazy fantasy, so I figured it was a fair question.

Quote from: Aos;444974So what would happen if Hasbro bought Piazo?

The only reason to do this would be to let Paizo be Paizo creatively while taking advantage of the remaining value of the D&D IP and Hasbro's strengths in marketing, distribution, and manufacturing.

Maybe if they bought Paizo & had them make 4e product (presumably with enough salary & job security to keep their creative staff from picking up and leaving), it could work out. But 4e as-is seems to have more problems than just the availability of adventures. If anything it's the other way around--3rd parties don't want to write for 4e because the market isn't good enough.

Quote from: One Horse Town;444975Isn't that pretty much what the new license promotes over anything else?

I guess so--I'm mainly picking up on what other people are saying here, and extrapolating. Again, the problem is (apparently) 3rd parties don't find it very attractive. Because 4e hasn't created a large enough market for adventures? Because the terms of the license are unfair? A little of both?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;444984And so it will come to pass someday that companies will understand that tabletop rpgs are most appreciated by hobbyists who have no desire to become blind consumers and the publishing of rpg material, while possibly providing a sustainable living for a few, will never provide that large pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

"You, too, can make hundreds of dollars a year as an RPG game author."

Although now even that's debatable.

What's the quickest way to have a million dollar RPG company?  Start out by investing two million dollars in it.

Quote from: Daedalus;444916And Ryan Dancey was shown the door.   How about the other people involved with the OGL/3.X?   Are they still with the company?

Probably not.  You get rid of idiots who make stupid mistakes that cost a company money

You mean that at Wizards they are about to get rid of themselves? Because the whole 4E fiasco (and, in a way, the 3.5E before it) fits your requirement.

Quote from: ggroy;444942This is similar to a monthly magazine or comic book model.

Though such a model can eventually break down if the number of buyers/subscribers falls too low.  One just has to see how many magazines have closed down over the last decade or so.

This is because the Internet has basically replicated all of the kinds of content people buy magazines for.  There's simply no reason to buy a magazine when I have countless internet sites that are more prompt to print, and free to access.

Perhaps a lesson could be learned from this.  As someone who is recently much more caught up to the tech curve than I used to be, and a new iPad owner, I'm starting to see where the technology has finally gotten to a "digital everything" point that is practical.

Sadly, the digital space for RPGs is still in the fucking dark ages.  We have one fucking monopoly that controls a vast majority of the market, and then a scattered bunch of publishers selling their own shit.  And it's all in PDF, which is easier to read now with my iPad, but it still costs a goddamn fortune and it's still just scans of the print book.  

I want to know why the fuck no one is on Kindle or iBooks or Nook, or putting out coffee-table apps for the App Store?  There's like 6 RPGs between the 4 of them that I've been able to find.  I wanna see hyperlinked, screen friendly, searchable, ebooks, not just crude scans of a print work slapped up on DTRPG for $40.

Quote from: Melan;444888Now that is some commentary on the society and economy we have created.

Scary.

Quote from: One Horse Town;444954Really, i think that Dancey and the OGL were good for the hobby in the short term, but less so for WotC.

The D20 license was brilliant.  The OGL was fucking retarded.  A free unlimited license to your core product?  Moronic.

They could have achieved the same success with 3e/D20 if the OGL had a 10 year expiration date.  

Quote from: J Arcane;445054I want to know why the fuck no one is on Kindle or iBooks or Nook, or putting out coffee-table apps for the App Store?

Yeah!  What's up with that?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445008I guess so--I'm mainly picking up on what other people are saying here, and extrapolating. Again, the problem is (apparently) 3rd parties don't find it very attractive. Because 4e hasn't created a large enough market for adventures? Because the terms of the license are unfair? A little of both?

Probably a little of both - and also a healthy dose of companies who were bigger 3e 3rd party publishers finding out that they had to do a bit more work to keep hanging onto WotC coat-tails.

I must admit that i was expecting a batch of new 3pp for 4e, but it hasn't really happened.

Quote from: jgants;444993Congratulations, you just described every company in the industry.  None of them have figured out a way to keep a single edition in print for a long time and still make money.  Not a one.

Chaosium and Palladium seem top manage.  They don't make millions, but they consistently show enough profit to keep their owners happy. And their "new editions" are usually completely compatible with old editions and everything else they've published for the game. Said new editions are generally little more than a new layout, some different art, and a few pages of new material.

Ah, so the ideal RPG company success story, in your mind, is to be a tiny, struggling entity barely scraping by. Gotcha.

Quote from: jgants;444993Congratulations, you just described every company in the industry.  None of them have figured out a way to keep a single edition in print for a long time and still make money.  Not a one.

Coincidentally who holds the record for quickest edition change?

Postmortem can claim about 9 months anyone who can top that?

Quote from: RandallS;445066Chaosium and Palladium seem top manage.

I don't know about Palladium but Chaosium has been on life support for more than a decade. Their Lovecraft fiction has kept them afloat and essentially they haven't had the ability to radically revise CoC even if they wanted to. Getting the BRP book together seems to have pushed them to the limit for 3 years.

If you look at how Chaosium handled Stormbringer (5 editions and SB5 is significantly different to SB1) then you get the impression they would have done more with the game if they could. RQ too went through three editions in about 5 years and there are still holdouts against the changes in RQ3, 25 years later.

On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that the base system has stood the test of time pretty well so there's no great push for radical system changes.

Quote from: two_fishes;445074Ah, so the ideal RPG company success story, in your mind, is to be a tiny, struggling entity barely scraping by. Gotcha.

NO, my realistic view of an RPG company is one that manages to make enough profit for the owner to live on. The hobby is too diverse and doesn't really need enough "bought stuff" to make large companies with lots and lots  of profit possible except as occasional flukes for short periods of time (TSR in the early 1980s, WOTC in the early 2000s).

I realize that those who want to make a killing off of RPGs would really like to believe that reality is other than it is, but that doesn't change reality. It's not the hobbyist's fault that their hobby isn't one that requires all involved to spend a lot of money regularly so a set of very profitable businesses can spring up around it.

Most small businesses in the US make enough to support the owner and his family and not a whole lot more. And most new businesses either fail within a few years or never become much larger than just described.  This is true across the board, not just in the RPG industry.

The RPG industry also suffers because little or nothing they produce is absolutely required by the hobbyist. Once one has a set of rules they like and some dice, they are pretty much set for life as far as "must have" hobby items go. Worse, the industry isn't even required to produce those. There are hundreds of hobbyist-produced rules available for free, created by hobbyists for their own enjoyment instead of to be sold. Many are as good or better (rules-wise) than those produced by the RPG industry. The main difference in some cases in that the free hobbyist produced material is not produced with high production values in the packaging -- of course fancy layouts and full color pro art in a rules book isn't required for play.

Quote from: RandallS;445082NO, my realistic view of an RPG company is one that manages to make enough profit for the owner to live on.

Besides Palladium, how many rpg companies are run in such a manner where the owner can work on rpg books full time and live solely on the profits?

Quote from: One Horse Town;445062Probably a little of both - and also a healthy dose of companies who were bigger 3e 3rd party publishers finding out that they had to do a bit more work to keep hanging onto WotC coat-tails.

Naw. It's the Character Builder.

In ye olden days, third party companies tended to do one of two things: re-work d20 into their own unique game (straying very far from D&D or not so far at all) or produce lots of fiddly bits for players.

WotC didn't ken too kindly to the first, thus we have the GSL.

Although companies can do the latter, they can't incorporate their material into the Character Builder. Thus to use their product, you've got to create your character by hand. And while we're all capable of doing so and some groups still do, many of us have been spoiled by the Character Builder. Unless the new material is so attractive that we're willing to forgo using the tools at our disposal to make use of it, we're not going to buy it. And, usually, new material isn't that attractive at all - it's a rehash of something, kind of neat but eh, etc..

If Diaz really wants to sell his game, he ought to make some electronic tools for it.

Or advertise. Another part of the problem is, I think, that the d20 glut made companies lazy on the marketing front. They can no longer just plop a product out on the market and expect folks to pick it up. Especially in this economy.

Seanchai

Quote from: RandallS;445082NO, my realistic view of an RPG company is one that manages to make enough profit for the owner to live on. The hobby is too diverse and doesn't really need enough "bought stuff" to make large companies with lots and lots  of profit possible except as occasional flukes for short periods of time (TSR in the early 1980s, WOTC in the early 2000s).

I realize that those who want to make a killing off of RPGs would really like to believe that reality is other than it is, but that doesn't change reality. It's not the hobbyist's fault that their hobby isn't one that requires all involved to spend a lot of money regularly so a set of very profitable businesses can spring up around it.

Most small businesses in the US make enough to support the owner and his family and not a whole lot more. And most new businesses either fail within a few years or never become much larger than just described.  This is true across the board, not just in the RPG industry.

The RPG industry also suffers because little or nothing they produce is absolutely required by the hobbyist. Once one has a set of rules they like and some dice, they are pretty much set for life as far as "must have" hobby items go. Worse, the industry isn't even required to produce those. There are hundreds of hobbyist-produced rules available for free, created by hobbyists for their own enjoyment instead of to be sold. Many are as good or better (rules-wise) than those produced by the RPG industry. The main difference in some cases in that the free hobbyist produced material is not produced with high production values in the packaging -- of course fancy layouts and full color pro art in a rules book isn't required for play.

QFMT.

The other option popular with certain companies, is to take the IP goodwill generated by the non-profitable rpg and turn it into boardgames, CCG's, computer games, movies, novels, etc.

Nothing is wrong with a company whoring out its IP for a buck, because companies exist to make money. When the company begins to put more support into these things than the rpg that spawned them it becomes time to ask: what hobby are they serving exactly?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;445105When the company begins to put more support into these things than the rpg that spawned them it becomes time to ask: what hobby are they serving exactly?

Eating regular.

Quote from: Aos;445108Eating regular.

Hahahahaha!!  I love a good sense of entitlement appetite!

Quote from: Reckall;445021You mean that at Wizards they are about to get rid of themselves? Because the whole 4E fiasco (and, in a way, the 3.5E before it) fits your requirement.

No.  d20 was good for Wizards when they required that in order to play third party games you needed the players handbook.

When people no longer needed to buy the PHB in order to play a d20 game then Wizards lost money.  People used their system and Wizards got nothing for it.

I dont see a problem with 4e.  I have it and I like it.  The rules are much easier to understand then the 3x rules which were much more complicated

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;444951Dancey did not make a mistake in backing the OGL, nor did he cost WoTC money. WoTC cost itself money by later rejecting the OGL. It's really not Dancey's fault that WoTC is getting boned for its own short-sighted mistakes.

How so?  Once people didnt need to buy a PHB people were making money using the D20 system and Wizards was getting nothing for it.

That's why they went with the GSL, so they had more control and could make more money.

If they dont make money that Wizards may be sold off in pieces.  And who knows if the person who buys D&D will make another rpg or they will just use the property for other media types

Quote from: One Horse Town;444954Really, i think that Dancey and the OGL were good for the hobby in the short term, but less so for WotC.

I disagree.  I think the OGL did a lot of damage to the hobby.  The market got flooded with crap that was using the D20 system when it wasnt a good fit.

Maybe you could consider it a good thing because people went back to making games with systems that are actually made for the game (which in my opinion is a good thing)

Quote from: Daedalus;445124No.  d20 was good for Wizards when they required that in order to play third party games you needed the players handbook.

When people no longer needed to buy the PHB in order to play a d20 game then Wizards lost money.  People used their system and Wizards got nothing for it.

I dont see a problem with 4e.  I have it and I like it.  The rules are much easier to understand then the 3x rules which were much more complicated

...yeah, you didn't really need to even buy a PHB when you could reference an online SRD.  

When my group was playing 3.5 only one guy had physical books.  The rest of us used free-and-legal hypertext srds for reference.

Quote from: misterguignol;445127...yeah, you didn't really need to even buy a PHB when you could reference an online SRD.  

When my group was playing 3.5 only one guy had physical books.  The rest of us used free-and-legal hypertext srds for reference.

Right, and that is giving away their prime product for free which doesnt seem like a smart business move.

Seriously, let me get this straight. Although companies would appear to make much more money by doing "overhaul" editions that change their game in large ways, what they altruistically ought to do is consistently release "micro" editions with few changes to the game. Even though the companies that follow the latter business model are small and struggle to survive and the companies that follow the former business model are large and make enough money to support a large staff, the former ought to change their model to the latter because it is the right thing to do. Is this the argument that is being put forward?

Quote from: RandallS;445066Chaosium and Palladium seem top manage.  They don't make millions, but they consistently show enough profit to keep their owners happy. And their "new editions" are usually completely compatible with old editions and everything else they've published for the game. Said new editions are generally little more than a new layout, some different art, and a few pages of new material.

As others have pointed out, Chaosium has been on life support.  It's barely clinging to life - not exactly the kind of template I would want for an industry.

Palladium is doing better, but still has a whopping 5 or so employees (last I heard, it was Kevin, the guy who handles the magazine, the guy who handles misc. business stuff, a receptionist, and a guy working in the warehouse).  And Palladium manages to get maybe one actual book (not counting the magazine) out every six months or so.  And even discounting the fan donations from the Crisis o' Treachery, if you read Kevin's statements you'll discover that the company has subsisted largely on his father's retirement money and substantial donations from other friends and family.

Also, it has changed versions on many of its games.  Some were relatively big rules changes (P Fan, BtS, and Rifts all were big enough to require new editions of sourcebooks as well).  The BtS game is essentially still incomplete after many years have passed.

In any event, Palladium is most certainly not a company to model after either.

So yeah, the only alternative to WotC appears to be near-dead publishers who may or may not get out a book or two a year.  How is that an improvement?

Quote from: Daedalus;445128Right, and that is giving away their prime product for free which doesnt seem like a smart business move.

Exactly.  The open license did two things that were bad for business:

1) The core product you need to play the game?  99% available for free on the Internet.  That had to cut into sales of the PHB, DMG, and MM.

2) Opened the floodgates for a deluge of absolutely crappy 3rd party books.  Yes, there were diamonds in the rough, but I cannot fathom how anyone pines for the days of shelves stocked with a multitude of poorly designed and executed d20 books.  Hell, even WotC had trouble with quality control in-house; 3rd party publishers were often much, much worse.

Quote from: two_fishes;445130Seriously, let me get this straight. Although companies would appear to make much more money by doing "overhaul" editions that change their game in large ways, what they altruistically ought to do is consistently release "micro" editions with few changes to the game. Even though the companies that follow the latter business model are small and struggle to survive and the companies that follow the former business model are large and make enough money to support a large staff, the former ought to change their model to the latter because it is the right thing to do. Is this the argument that is being put forward?

I would think the viability of the overhaul model is related to the size of the company and popularity of the game. With smaller publishers like us, I think the danger of alienating your core audience is more of a risk, than a company like wizards that can expect high volume sales for new editions. Still the gaming community now seems pretty split between those who made the jump to 4E and those that stuck with 3E/Pathfinder/d20. I think the key is to know who your customers are and who you are appealing to when you make a new edition that is a large break from the previous one.

Quote from: Daedalus;445126I disagree.  I think the OGL did a lot of damage to the hobby.  The market got flooded with crap that was using the D20 system when it wasnt a good fit.

This damaged the industry by turning hobbyists who would buy anything produced (which is good for the industry) into hobbyists who, having been burned by a lot of bad product, became far more selective in what they purchased (making it harder for the industry to make money). I don't see how it damaged the hobby, in fact, one could probably make a case that making hobbyist be more selective in what they purchased/used might have even been a major benefit for the hobby.

Quote from: RandallS;445135This damaged the industry by turning hobbyists who would buy anything produced (which is good for the industry) into hobbyists who, having been burned by a lot of bad product, became far more selective in what they purchased (making it harder for the industry to make money). I don't see how it damaged the hobby, in fact, one could probably make a case that making hobbyist be more selective in what they purchased/used might have even been a major benefit for the hobby.

For me, it wasn't the third party products that made me more selective (I kind of liked the fact that there was always a book for something, even if the quality was all over the map). It was the official splat books put out by wizards. My reasons were pretty simple. I felt they overcomplicated the game and busted the mechanics. Plus, they declined in quality IMO over time. In the end, I was buying books only to keep up with my players. It ended up being easier to stick only to the core books (DMG, PHB and MM) and save everyone some cash.

Quote from: Seanchai;445097Naw. It's the Character Builder.

Seanchai

I think you're right about the character builder, but it's not really a "no", more an "also".

Quote from: two_fishes;445074Ah, so the ideal RPG company success story, in your mind, is to be a tiny, struggling entity barely scraping by. Gotcha.

I see this attitude on too many RPG forums.  Creepy.

Quote from: misterguignol;445133Exactly.  The open license did two things that were bad for business:

1) The core product you need to play the game?  99% available for free on the Internet.  That had to cut into sales of the PHB, DMG, and MM.

2) Opened the floodgates for a deluge of absolutely crappy 3rd party books.  Yes, there were diamonds in the rough, but I cannot fathom how anyone pines for the days of shelves stocked with a multitude of poorly designed and executed d20 books.  Hell, even WotC had trouble with quality control in-house; 3rd party publishers were often much, much worse.

Exactly.   I don't know about your local FLGS's but the D20 bubble has burst and there are still usold D20 product on their shelves.  They tried doing a big sale and that got rid of a bunch of it but not all of it

Quote from: Daedalus;445126I disagree.  I think the OGL did a lot of damage to the hobby.  The market got flooded with crap that was using the D20 system when it wasnt a good fit.

I guess freedom sucks? Without a company telling people what is good they have to think for themselves.

I know my answer is snarky but every time I see a comment like this I roll my eyes. Yes the d20 glut was messy and that what happens in a situation where there was artificial scarcity for a popular product or pastime. The same thing will result when the Disney, Marvel, DC, etc, etc copyrights run out. Anybody who had an idea will pitch and with publishing technology the way it is now, people will be able to get it.

But eventually the glut passes as people work it out of their system.  And what happens afterward is anybody guess but much of it will be interesting and entertaining to various audiences.  And none it would be possible without the creative freedom of being under a open license or the public domain.

For example Alan Moore and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. While I don't particularly care for it myself it is great that he was able to take all those 19th century fiction heroes and make an interesting story out of it.

With RPG we are going to continue to see all kinds of stuff produce that we would never see thanks to the OGL.

Just pondering...

If the failure in quality in the d20 glut can be attributed to 3PP... what can the failure in quality (especially in the e-zines) right now in 4e material be attributed to?

Quote from: estar;445150I guess freedom sucks? Without a company telling people what is good they have to think for themselves.

I know my answer is snarky but every time I see a comment like this I roll my eyes. Yes the d20 glut was messy and that what happens in a situation where there was artificial scarcity for a popular product or pastime. The same thing will result when the Disney, Marvel, DC, etc, etc copyrights run out. Anybody who had an idea will pitch and with publishing technology the way it is now, people will be able to get it.

But eventually the glut passes as people work it out of their system.  And what happens afterward is anybody guess but much of it will be interesting and entertaining to various audiences.  And none it would be possible without the creative freedom of being under a open license or the public domain.

For example Alan Moore and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. While I don't particularly care for it myself it is great that he was able to take all those 19th century fiction heroes and make an interesting story out of it.

With RPG we are going to continue to see all kinds of stuff produce that we would never see thanks to the OGL.

I don't think the ogl was bad for the hobby, just for wizards. Also I think even the glut was good for the hobby in some ways. I can remember when I came back in C. 2000-2001, I was overwhelmed by the shelves worth of crazy d20 stuff. There was a definite feeling of energy in those days.

Quote from: misterguignol;445127...yeah, you didn't really need to even buy a PHB when you could reference an online SRD.  

But where I think the problem lay was with games that you didn't need the PHB, SRD, or anything like that because they were self-contained. Games such as Midnight and Mutants & Masterminds.

Seanchai

Quote from: Daedalus;445144Exactly.   I don't know about your local FLGS's but the D20 bubble has burst and there are still usold D20 product on their shelves.  They tried doing a big sale and that got rid of a bunch of it but not all of it

My FLGS still has boxes of this stuff. The owner brings it to the local cons. A couple months ago, I got a bunch of the Penumbra books (Atlas' d20 offerings) for cheap - I can't remember if they were a dollar or two dollars a piece.

Seanchai

Quote from: Aos;445160I don't think the ogl was bad for the hobby, just for wizards. Also I think even the glut was good for the hobby in some ways. I can remember when I came back in C. 2000-2001, I was overwhelmed by the shelves worth of crazy d20 stuff. There was a definite feeling of energy in those days.

I disagree, I think they sold way more PHBs then they would otherwise. Granted I also think 3.X would be a hit without the OGL but it would be an order of magnitude less.

The prospect of finally creating legitimate D&D material sucked in a lot of people. And more importantly most of them were the type that bring their friends in along for the  ride. So they had an impact far greater than their raw numbers would suggest.

Quote from: Seanchai;445169But where I think the problem lay was with games that you didn't need the PHB, SRD, or anything like that because they were self-contained. Games such as Midnight and Mutants & Masterminds.

And the number of players they had were drop in the bucket compared to those buying and using Wizard products and supplement. And most of them would not have been likely wizard customers anyway for various reasons.

But with everybody using the same core system, more or less, the chances of picking up a wizard product went up dramatically. Far more likely than if White Wolf or SJ Games (gurps) would been the #2 RPG.  The one point of the OGL was to expand the marketplace and reach of the d20 system that was under D&D.

The fact you could make your own RPG off of the d20 SRD was part of getting onboard in the first place. Sure there was idealism but also mistrust because of the stunts TSR pulled. Nobody was going to sink money into producing material if they thought Wizards could yank their business out from under them.  Even then many thought the OGL was a way for Wizards to steal everybody else idea for free.

The d20 glut was the result of a boom mentality. In the initial month anything 3PP for 3.X was gold and it piled on from there.  The nail in the coffin was the switch from 3.0 to 3.5. All the sudden all the 3.0 book were toxic as hell despite the small changes that were made to the system.

Quote from: Seanchai;445169But where I think the problem lay was with games that you didn't need the PHB, SRD, or anything like that because they were self-contained. Games such as Midnight and Mutants & Masterminds.

Seanchai

I think they're both shades of the same problem.

Quote from: estar;445176And the number of players they had were drop in the bucket compared to those buying and using Wizard products and supplement.

The number of people playing and purchasing all other games is a drop in the bucket.

Quote from: estar;445176And most of them would not have been likely wizard customers anyway for various reasons.

But with everybody using the same core system, more or less, the chances of picking up a wizard product went up dramatically.

It seems to me you're contradicting yourself here. If they're not going to be WotC customers, there's no reason for WotC to bother with d20. However, if this last statement of yours is the accurate one, the WotC has every reason to be concerned about losing sales.

Quote from: estar;445176The fact you could make your own RPG off of the d20 SRD was part of getting onboard in the first place.

Not from WotC's perspective. They wanted D&D adventures and supplements.

Seanchai

Quote from: Aos;445160I don't think the ogl was bad for the hobby, just for wizards. Also I think even the glut was good for the hobby in some ways. I can remember when I came back in C. 2000-2001, I was overwhelmed by the shelves worth of crazy d20 stuff. There was a definite feeling of energy in those days.

The OGL glut was the Atari 2600 of third party gaming.

Sadly, we've yet to see a real contender for playing the Nintendo role.

Quote from: J Arcane;445220The OGL glut was the Atari 2600 of third party gaming.

Sadly, we've yet to see a real contender for playing the Nintendo role.

I remember tons of crappy video games being produced for the Atari 2600, around 1982-1983.  (I didn't know it at the time, that the bottom fell out of the video game console market).  It seemed like everybody and their mother were cranking out tons of crappy Atari 2600 games in those days.

This seems to happen whenever something is in a "bubble" phase.

Quote from: ggroy;445221I remember tons of crappy video games being produced for the Atari 2600, around 1982-1983.  (I didn't know it at the time, that the bottom fell out of the video game console market).  It seemed like everybody and their mother were cranking out tons of crappy Atari 2600 games in those days.

This seems to happen whenever something is in a "bubble" phase.

I do miss those days when the only bubbles my 8-year-old brain knew were the ones that came out of the end of a dripping wand. But I digress.

As to the weepy letter that started this thread, if a publisher wants his company to get noticed, maybe he should get off his rump and do something about it instead of looking for handouts. My god, "reward us"?! I've got bad news, buddy. When your company dies, don't expect WotC to come to the funeral.

Quote from: Napftor;445256...When your company dies, don't expect WotC to come to the funeral.

Don't expect anyone to come to the funeral.  :-D

Quote from: jgants;444909If you think Pathfinder will enjoy the day in the sun forever, I have a bridge to sell you.

Pathfinder will have a new edition.  It's too big and too complicated not to.

...

I feel the Paizo model is a solid one and proven now.  I don't believe it's going to fade into the sunset anytime soon, but I am also not so naive to think it will be here forever. Now, If they jump on a new edition, without some compatibility with the previous, and then change the whole licensing scheme isolating the 3PP they have supporting them and causing a great rift in the Pathfinder customer base, then I am sure they will fail faster than they would have otherwise.

If they stay steady, and keep listening and involving their fans and partners, I have no reason to believe they couldn't be as long lasting as Chaosium or Palladium, and god knows those two companies have not always made sound business decisions (or even jumped headlong into the 21st century in one case). But those companies do pay attention to their fans. I feel Paizo's current approach makes a solid bet they are here to stay for a long haul with the same focus on fans and giving their customers what they want.  

Quote from: Aos;444928... you look like a self satisfied jerkoff who has stuffed his cheeks full of nuts...

I am a cheeky self satisfied nut eating person. I will cop to that. No mumps though, it was just me making faces at the computer screen. Good eye.

Quote from: Aos;444928... I think for a retroclone publisher Piazo has done very well for itself, but, unlike you, I don't think they are going to change the status quo in the long run, I could be wrong, but I'm not married to the idea, so that's okay.

They have already changed the status quo. This is why I am baffled at your posts (and opinion). How can you look at what they've done and say they haven't?  Also,the retroclone thing is cute (and somewhat accurate), but I doubt many regard Paizo as a retroclone publisher. However, in the strict definition, they are. I imagine their fans are grateful they don't run their business the same way as the "retro" companies, of whence the game they have RESURRECTED came from. Or something like that.

Quote from: Aos;444928What is this, anyway? We get them every now and then, these guys who are married to some company or other. ...

I am actually not married to any company. I support various companies and games (with my dollars and InterWebs chanting). It's not my "loyalty" or fanboyism to Paizo, but a simple observation that they are a savvy group of gaming business people (IMHO), and that the model they have setup is a solid one that is going to stick around for some time to come.

Once again, I said in the long run. I don't mean 2-3 years. I mean like a decade. White Wolf  and Crossgen both shook up the status quo- where are they now? White Wolf is a shadow of its former self and Cross Gen is gone. Furthermore, PF is already on the splat treadmill- that is not innovation, it is the same old same old. All that remains is the production of a second edition and they are just one among many. If you find that hard to understand, perhaps you should check and make sure you know who the president is.

P.S. I don't have any stake in any of this. It's all just idle talk for me. I've never spent a dime on Paizo product, and although I have some 4e stuff I'm not going to be buying any more of it.

Quote from: estar;445176The d20 glut was the result of a boom mentality. In the initial month anything 3PP for 3.X was gold and it piled on from there.  The nail in the coffin was the switch from 3.0 to 3.5. All the sudden all the 3.0 book were toxic as hell despite the small changes that were made to the system.

Which is a really weird mentality when you come down to it, since the two versions are functionally compatible. A 3.0 module could be run for 3.5 and the players wouldn't notice the difference. The switch was one of those moments of clarity where it suddenly became clear to me how susceptible gamers are to elementary marketing techniques. I incorrectly assumed everyone else was a conscious consumer, and that was just an illusion created by the forums I was visiting at the time and the people in my social circle.

Quote from: Seanchai;445169But where I think the problem lay was with games that you didn't need the PHB, SRD, or anything like that because they were self-contained. Games such as Midnight and Mutants & Masterminds.

I know what you mean but the two games you cite are bad examples.
Mutants & Masterminds changed the 3.x engine to a point that it was a new game, not a rehash of the PHB. And Midnight was not even a full game, but a setting - exactly the kind of support stuff that WotC wanted to see from the OGL.

Better examples would have been:
Everquest
Slaine
Conan
World of Warcraft
Mongoose Pocket PHB

But WotC was fully aware of that danger, and didn't see it as a problem. Ryan Dancey was asked in a retailer seminar at Gen Con (where he explained the OGL thing to us retailers, and what good the license would bring us):
"What hinders a third party publisher to just reword the PHB and sell it?"

Dancey's answer (paraphrased):
"Nothing. We know that they could do this but we expect that they will never be able to beat our production values and pricing structure thanks to our ability to use economy of scale." (Long winded for: Let. Them. Try.)

Don't forget that the 3.0 PHB (or rather all three core hardbacks) carried a 19.99 price tag -- dirt cheap for a 300+ page full color hardcover.

Quote from: Melan;445275Which is a really weird mentality when you come down to it, since the two versions are functionally compatible. A 3.0 module could be run for 3.5 and the players wouldn't notice the difference.

I'm not sure. The updates for City of the Spider Queen, the last WotC adventure published under 3.0 rules, were massive. Plus, several play reports claimed that running the module under 3.5 was way easier than under 3.0, as so many individual things like Spell Resistance or the drow abilities had changed, effectively changing key parameters of the encounters.

The problem is that individually the changes don't seem much. It's their accumulation that's the problem, and the primary reason I largely stopped buying Pathfinder product when they switched to 3.75.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445287But WotC was fully aware of that danger, and didn't see it as a problem.

It's no historic accident that you're quoting Dancey 2000 on this. WotC initially didn't see a problem. Mongoose' own Matt Sprange likes to reference the Dancy quote you gave in defense of their doing the mini PHBs, DMGs etc. The thing is, after the departure of Dancey and Cook, these products were seen to be problematic by WotC, and suddenly the party line became 'oooh, we only ever wanted the OGL to drive those products we didn't see a commerical point in, like adventure modules - not core rulebooks'.

Quote from: trechriron;445260I feel the Paizo model is a solid one and proven now.  I don't believe it's going to fade into the sunset anytime soon, but I am also not so naive to think it will be here forever. ...

They have already changed the status quo. This is why I am baffled at your posts (and opinion). ...

It's not my "loyalty" or fanboyism to Paizo, but a simple observation that they are a savvy group of gaming business people (IMHO), and that the model they have setup is a solid one that is going to stick around for some time to come.

Before we praise the "massive success" of Pathfinder, we may want to keep some perspective.  The "proven business model" is a whopping year and a half old.  There's a long, long way to go before they become proven.  

They haven't changed the status quo at all as far as I can see - they are basically still a growing little upstart company that has had one good year of sales.

There are plenty of RPGs, tv shows, musicians, etc who managed to have great success the first year or two, only to flounder a short time later.  We'll know a lot more about their success if they can go five, eight, ten years without changing editions.

Quote from: Aos;445267Once again, I said in the long run. I don't mean 2-3 years. I mean like a decade. White Wolf  and Crossgen both shook up the status quo- where are they now? White Wolf is a shadow of its former self and Cross Gen is gone. Furthermore, PF is already on the splat treadmill- that is not innovation, it is the same old same old. All that remains is the production of a second edition and they are just one among many.

This is what I see as well.  Again, it's easy to have a great first year.

What do you do when you run out of people pissed off about 4e?  What do you do once you run out of supplements to publish? What do you do when the rules start to collapse under their own weight?

I'm not remotely convinced that Pathfinder will suddenly stop selling supplements and that both the company and fans will be satisfied with a never-changing game that just puts out adventure path modules.

Maybe WotC put out 4e a little early.  And maybe they changed things too much with the whole powers system.  But make no mistake, 3e was nearing the end of its life cycle and did need a new edition.  Pathfinder is going to find itself in the exact same position in a few years - maybe it will wait a year or two longer, maybe the rule changes will be a little less controversial, but it will happen.

Windjammer: There are all sorts of balance issues. But does it matter if an encounter is difficulty 1.0, difficulty 1.1 or difficulty 0.9? It might, but I think overall it wouldn't be such a huge thing. Well, okay, 3.5 may "break" some builds and create opportunities for others.

Quote from: jgants;445290What do you do when you run out of people pissed off about 4e?  What do you do once you run out of supplements to publish? What do you do when the rules start to collapse under their own weight?

What do you when WotC puts out 5e and lures away a big old slice of your base? That is going to happen. If it has D&D on the tin, many, many people will be curious- regardless of how they feel about 4e.  I hate 3.x, but I bought 4e out of curiosity. No regrets though, my kids think its cool.

Quote from: Aos;445310What do you when WotC puts out 5e and lures away a big old slice of your base? That is going to happen. If it has D&D on the tin, many, many people will be curious- regardless of how they feel about 4e.  I hate 3.x, but I bought 4e out of curiosity. No regrets though, my kids think its cool.

Bingo. The problem with making a product for those disatisfied with the current state of D&D is that your audience only lasts as long as it takes for a new edition to come along and take them right back.

PF is still just a substitute edition made for hardcore 3.5 fans who didn't like 4e.

If 5e comes out, they'll be rushing back into the waiting arms of WOTC, and Paizo will be left holding the bag.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445287I know what you mean but the two games you cite are bad examples.
Mutants & Masterminds changed the 3.x engine to a point that it was a new game...

That's exactly the point. It's a new game that got to slap a d20 logo on itself.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445287And Midnight was not even a full game, but a setting - exactly the kind of support stuff that WotC wanted to see from the OGL.

Midnight is its own game in everything but name. It doesn't tell you to roll 4d6 and drop the lowest? Big deal. Moreover, it changes the game. It drops and adds mechanics and changes default assumptions inherent in D&D (you're heroes, there's an adventuring class, you're going to be decked out in magic items, et al.).

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445287But WotC was fully aware of that danger, and didn't see it as a problem.

Your quotes and the situation are apples and oranges. Here's why: In general, official D&D products are and will be more popular than third party ones. They don't necessarily have to be better, prettier, more useful, etc. - they just have to be "official." WotC doesn't have to worry about Mongoose's efforts because their class guides, pocket pals, etc., won't outsell WotC's material.

But third party publishers started creating non-D&D material with the license. Non-D&D third party material isn't competing with D&D - it isn't running up against the brick wall of "officialdom." Midnight isn't D&D, it's Midnight. Iron Heroes isn't D&D, it's Iron Heroes. Iron Kingdoms isn't D&D, it's Iron Kingdoms. And so on.

Or you've got Mutants & Masterminds and SpyCraft, which don't even tickle notions of official products versus unofficial ones.

What's worse is that when people buy Mutants & Masterminds, they want to play it. So they set aside D&D. Meaning they're less likely to keep up with D&D purchases. There's a three month window in which products sell...

Seanchai

Quote from: jgants;445290They haven't changed the status quo at all as far as I can see - they are basically still a growing little upstart company that has had one good year of sales.

The status quo has changed - I'm just not sure I'd Paizo are the ones who changed it. Two things have occurred: For the first time, it's been..."profitable" to stick with an older edition of D&D and WotC has changed their model from print products to electronic products.

Quote from: jgants;445290Pathfinder is going to find itself in the exact same position in a few years - maybe it will wait a year or two longer, maybe the rule changes will be a little less controversial, but it will happen.

The rules changes will have to significant enough that people are inclined to get the new edition, otherwise, what's the point? If you're going to kick off a new product lifecycle with a new edition, you've got to get the majority of your customers to move to the new product. If they can still use their old rulebooks - core rulebooks being the cash cows of the system - you're not going to be successful.

Seanchai

Of course WotC can get its audience back. Most people don't care about companies; WotC could even just clone Pathfinder, to the extent that would be legal, add a few fixes, and declare that to be the new edition. People would buy it.

Paizo wouldn't care. Their add-on products would still be compatible. In fact they might be happy to see the market re-unified and the core game promoted & manufactured by Hasbro/WotC, because now they could sell their stuff to even more people.

Hasbro/WotC on the other hand will have to either satisfy themselves with a very different approach to selling core books (slow/steady/evergreen), or compete head to head with Paizo, and anyone else who jumps back into the d20-compatible supplement market.

You're assuming they follow the forum wisdom that the correct strategy for Wizards is to go back to 3.x for the model for next edition.

It isn't.

It's true they need another 3.x, but more in the sense that it's a revolutionary new edition of the game that grabs back everyone.

Reprinting 3.x with "5e" on the cover this time won't do that.

Release a whole new edition though, built from scratch to cherry pick the best of the old editions while moving it forward in line with game design developments in the rest of the hobby, like 3.0 did, but leave out that nonsense OGL, and Paizo not only loses their audience, they can't even go back to riding Wizards' coattails unless they want to face their legal wrath.  

Sure Mayfair eventually won the Role-Aids fight last time, but it almost bankrupted them to do it, and they were one of the bigger hobby companies around originally.

Actually, I'm assuming that there's really something to the rumors that Wizards isn't happy with 4e sales, that 3rd parties aren't producing, and that Pathfinder is seriously cutting into 4e sales, if not outselling them.

Let's see, suppose Wizards comes up with a 5e that isn't compatible with 3e. Well, first of all, it would have to be really great. 4e wasn't (objectively, based on the assumptions above).

So you've got a bit of a problem, since radical changes of the sort designed to make the game utterly incompatible are (a) unpopular just because they're changes, and (b) at risk of being unpopular because the core of D&D really is pretty good (objectively).

I mean, for example, I saw a stack of Earthdawn books at HBP yesterday and leafed through them out of curiosity. It's conceptually similar to D&D at a broad level, but every detail is different. Not only would D&D purists turn up their noses at something like that being called 5e, but the simplicity & elegance of the fundamental engine, still present in 3.x, including classes, levels, hit points, armor class, spell slots, and the numbers & algorithms associated with them--is hard to beat. You can simplify it down to Labyrinth Lord (or even more), or you can dirty it up to 3e, but there's still a lot of commonality.

So I'd think that 5e would need to be much more recognizably D&D than 4e is.

On top of that you've got the OGL sitting around, something Mayfair didn't have on its side. Also, Kenzer has already shown that you can release a 4e-compatible product without worrying about a license.

So I don't think the third parties would be threatened by 5e.

Nor do I think WotC needs to feel threatened by them, unless Wizards wants to be able to sell subpar (or overpriced) accessories to a captive market.

Quote from: J Arcane;445347Reprinting 3.x with "5e" on the cover this time won't do that.

I agree.

The few hardcore 3.5E D&D holdouts I know of locally, are very much like "grognards" now.  They absolutely refuse to play Pathfinder, and don't buy any Pathfinder books whatsoever.  (One won't even allow any non-WotC d20 3PP supplement books in their game).

If WotC just reprints the 3.5E core books with "5E" on the cover, they would most likely just laugh and think it's a joke.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445363So you've got a bit of a problem, since radical changes of the sort designed to make the game utterly incompatible are (a) unpopular just because they're changes, and (b) at risk of being unpopular because the core of D&D really is pretty good (objectively).

So I'd think that 5e would need to be much more recognizably D&D than 4e is.

I agree on that.  What I meant by revolutionary was probably more "evolutionary", the way 3e was.

3e was so great because it was still the core of D&D, but with saner modern mechanics that was easier for new and old to get into.  It fell down some at later times by getting rather overcomplicated at high levels, and with all the loopy splats but it was a solid game.

I think 5e, if they're smart, will do much the same thing.  Get back to the core of D&D, and take inspiration from the older B/X with a touch of 3e, more accessible but with the complexity there if you want it, and of course without the faux-MMO mechanics and a bit more straightforward vanilla implied setting.

Basically, I see them essentially doing something like what HackMaster 5 has done, but with clearer descent of terminology and themes.

And for god's sake, bring back the original alignment system for fuck's sake.  It's so iconic even non-D&D-playing 4chan nerds know about it, ditching it was stupid.

Quote from: J Arcane;445347Release a whole new edition though, built from scratch to cherry pick the best of the old editions while moving it forward in line with game design developments in the rest of the hobby, like 3.0 did, but leave out that nonsense OGL

The hard part is figuring out what exactly to cherry pick, without driving away even more players.

Quote from: J Arcane;445347and Paizo not only loses their audience, they can't even go back to riding Wizards' coattails unless they want to face their legal wrath.

The question is whether Paizo has their own faction of hardcore "grognards".  If there is a large enough established group of hardcore Pathfinder grognards, in principle they may very well continue playing Pathfinder and not paying any attention to WotC at all.  Such a business model may very well end up resembling Palladium or Chaosium.

Quote from: ggroy;445367Such a business model may very well end up resembling Palladium or Chaosium.

Not really a victory, imo.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445363Actually, I'm assuming that there's really something to the rumors that Wizards isn't happy with 4e sales, that 3rd parties aren't producing, and that Pathfinder is seriously cutting into 4e sales, if not outselling them.

Why? For the sake of argument- or have you seen something more credible than rumors?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445363Nor do I think WotC needs to feel threatened by them, unless Wizards wants to be able to sell subpar (or overpriced) accessories to a captive market.

This would seem to be a pretty logical desire, especially if you can make it  work in the long term.

Quote from: J Arcane;4453663e was so great because it was still the core of D&D, but with saner modern mechanics that was easier for new and old to get into.  It fell down some at later times by getting rather overcomplicated at high levels, and with all the loopy splats but it was a solid game.

The problem with this is that WOTC's corporate masters seem to want WOTC D&D to be something that they control all the IP on. Unfortunately, the core of D&D is in the open content 3.x SRDs -- to the point that they can be used to clone any version of D&D except 4e. I think that any future version of D&D that everyone would agree is an evolution of core D&D would also be clonable via OGL material. In fact, I'd say that any version of D&D that isn't mostly clonable from 3.x OGL material would be too far from core D&D for most of the people who do not think 4e is "core D&D".

IMHO, the goal of producing a D&D that 90% of those who have ever played D&D would agree is an evolution of the OD&D to 3.x line is incompatible with the goal of having a D&D where WOTC controls all the IP.

Well, tough shit for Wizards.  The alternative is a move that would be deliberate suicide, especially considering that so much of the popular zeitgeist for the game right now is tied up in classic D&D mythology.

Abandoning core D&D materials would basically destroy every shred of goodwill they have both with the grognards, and the wider fanbase.  They're already pushing it as it is, with some of their biggest public supporters like the Penny Arcade folks pushing away from it.

You deal with clone RPGs the way you deal with clones of anything else, by making the real thing so much better, and making it abundantly clear it IS the real thing, and by throwing your weight around in the market to ensure that no one else can compete on your level, only nip at your heels.

There were never any serious sales for actual copied rulebooks of the current edition of the game, so that's hardly a threat, and worrying about them copying it later when 6e comes along is I think putting the cart before the horse.

Y'all are forgetting that they are fucking Wizards of the Coast, the heir apparent to TSR, and the owners of the actual D&D brand name, and that's the thing that matters the most because that's the thing that literally defines RPGs for the outside audience.  That's the thing that has it's own MMO, it has it's own T-shirt lines, and jokes in popular TV series, and video games and card games and minatures and boardgames and on and on and on.

Pathfinder may be selling well in the nerdstores, but in mindshare D&D will always rule the roost.

In principle Hasbro can just take the D&D tabletop rpg off the market for several years or decades.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445329Of course WotC can get its audience back. Most people don't care about companies; WotC could even just clone Pathfinder, to the extent that would be legal, add a few fixes, and declare that to be the new edition. People would buy it.

The hard part would be swallowing the pride. :D

Quote from: Aos;445369Why? For the sake of argument- or have you seen something more credible than rumors?

Nope, nothing more than rumors and anecdotes. Well, that and the fact that WotC seems to be scrambling.

QuoteThis would seem to be a pretty logical desire, especially if you can make it  work in the long term.

Of course, any business would like to lock in customers if they can. Then they can cut development costs and production costs, raise prices, etc.

But if you live in an environment where customers have alternatives, then walling off your garden doesn't work very well unless you offer superior value. If you don't offer superior value, and you wall off your garden, then it actually works against you, because all the other producers who make things that are compatible with each other are collectively increasing the value of their products.

I think 3e suxxors, but I firmly believe Paizo can suck a good 5 years out of Pathfinder and a decent 10 years before launching an overhaul about the time D&D 6e arrives.

Quote from: J Arcane;445313If 5e comes out, they'll be rushing back into the waiting arms of WOTC, and Paizo will be left holding the bag.

Just like 4e there will be an initial excitement.  

And then, regardless how good the 5e game may be, the older game groups will migrate back to whatever edition promises their endless summer.  And regardless how bad the 5e game may be, the hardcore D&Ders and the RPGA members will stick with it.

D&D-isms and roleplaying-isms is so ingrained computer games so if the young kids wanted to get into pen and paper tabletop RPGs, we would have seen it already.

Quote from: J Arcane;445366And for god's sake, bring back the original alignment system for fuck's sake.  It's so iconic even non-D&D-playing 4chan nerds know about it, ditching it was stupid.

I'd rather alignment options for the GM to choose.  I personally love Moorcockian Law / Neutral / Chaos far more than the 9 AD&D aligns.  Also, 4e's definition of Non-Aligned is good stuff and more interesting than Neutral.

Quote from: RandallS;445370The problem with this is that WOTC's corporate masters seem to want WOTC D&D to be something that they control all the IP on.

And if you can't control your IP, you are fucked in the 21st century marketplace.   Because if you don't control it, somebody else is going to do a 10% change-o-fix-o and they will control it.

There was no reason for the SRD to contain any iconic spell, monster or magic item.  

Quote from: ggroy;445375In principle Hasbro can just take the D&D tabletop rpg off the market for several years or decades.

Better yet, fuck the tabletop.   Leave it to Paizo and the 80s kids.  

Refocus the game for online play, web-enabled TV and console play.   Make it something you play on your tablet, smartphone and combine the power of graphics, music, sound F/X with the power of a human DM and human player interaction.

WotC could take D&D to where the kids actually are now and will be in the future, instead of expecting the kids to retrograde their lives to find D&D.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;445384Nope, nothing more than rumors and anecdotes. Well, that and the fact that WotC seems to be scrambling.


.

See now, i have an alternate hypothesis in relation to the perceived scrambling- I think they are just moving more and more of their stuff online. As I've said before, I think they are charting a future course focused on the subscription model. Brick and mortar book stores my be around for a long time to come  (although, I have my doubts in this regard) but they are not healthy and are unlikely to be ever again; eventually they are going to go away- or be reduced in number to the point where they may as well be gone- like record stores.

Is anybody still buying music on CDs?  I'm sure someone is, but I live in a fairly large city and I know about 1 record store, and most of their space is taken up by used DVDs. I'm sure there are a few more, but I don't know where they are, and I have no reason to bother tracking them down.

As for books, I've got an ereader, and I think it is, for a me a better format; I'd rather read a book on my kindle than dig around in my closet or garage for the same book- much in the same way I'm far more likely to listen to music my ipod than I am to dig out a CD. I really think the future of Rpgs is going to be online, on ereraders and on tablets- certainly physical books will still get published, but I think there's a good chance you'll have to buy those online too.

Now before i get branded as nutty, ask yourself how many ipod owners you knew in 2000 and how many you know now. Furthermore, younger people are already accustomed to getting their content online, this is only going to increase as we move into the future.

iPad + Dropbox + GoodReader = Who needs RPG books?

Quote from: Aos;445394Is anybody still buying music on CDs?  I'm sure someone is, but I live in a fairly large city and I know about 1 record store, and most of their space is taken up by used DVDs.

I think backing music CDs was what Borders was saying was a major contributor to their demise. They've got these huge CD collections that, er, sit there.

Seanchai

Quote from: Aos;445394Is anybody still buying music on CDs?  I'm sure someone is

*Raises hand*

These days I mostly buy music cds second handed, or online.  These are usually cds I find for 2 or 3 dollars a pop, or titles which are not available at all on iTunes.

Quote from: Aos;445394See now, i have an alternate hypothesis in relation to the perceived scrambling- I think they are just moving more and more of their stuff online. As I've said before, I think they are charting a future course focused on the subscription model.

All this makes sense but the scrambling seems to encompass more than just the publishing of physical books. Essentials seems to reflect a rethink in the overall rules, even if the result is a muddle. From hearing others talk, I have the impression that production of add-on materials (rules, scenarios, settings) seems to have slowed and/or changed in emphasis, rather than simply being moved online or parceled out in smaller bits.

In short, trying to turn D&D into something you access over the net, and play into a something you do on a social network that Wizards somehow monetizes certainly makes lots of sense, but I don't see how it ought to affect our reading of the tea leaves one way or the other.

There's one big exception to what I just wrote, which is that if we had access to all the data, we should be looking at the aggregate of all D&D revenue including DDI, and placing relatively less weight on anecdotes from B&M retailers or even Amazon. To be honest I don't know if anyone's claimed to look at things from that broad perspective.

Well there is definitely something going on, but as you say, without all the data, who can say what it is. For example, what we are witnessing could just be the result of meddling from WoTC's corporate big brother. The cause of such meddling might be any number of things and could be completely unrelated to anything practical or rational.

Certain games are friendlier to 3rd party support than others. And this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the publisher, though the terms of the agreements can affect things.

For example, Green Ronin is pretty supportive and open with their properties, but M&M gets better sales than True20 for Vigilance Press. So its not all about the GSL.

As for asking Wizards to promote and reward 3PP, that just seems really naive to me. They weren't doing that stuff in the OGL era, and they were WAY more open to 3PP then than they are now.

Quote from: Seanchai;445322Midnight is its own game in everything but name. It doesn't tell you to roll 4d6 and drop the lowest?

Sorry, but that is just not true. The books (1st and 2nd edition) have no explanation of 3e's basics. It's not only that "4d6" character creation is missing; there is no listing of attributes, saving throws, basic spells (only a handful of added setting specific spells), basic feats, no explanation of how combat works - you just cannot play Midnight with only the Midnight setting book.

According to your logic nearly all setting books, from Sovereign Stone to Wilderlands of High Fantasy to Accordlands to Relics & Rituals: Excalibur to even WotC's own Eberron would be full games, cutting into the sales of the core books.

Quote from: Seanchai;445322That's exactly the point. It's a new game that got to slap a d20 logo on itself.
(...)
But third party publishers started creating non-D&D material with the license.
(...)
What's worse is that when people buy Mutants & Masterminds, they want to play it. So they set aside D&D. Meaning they're less likely to keep up with D&D purchases.

But then I understand even less of what you are saying.

You are right that those new games probably took away sales from WotC, but that was the same situation before the OGL. There were always games tackling different genres (some not even competing with the default dungeon-type fantasy, like CoC), using different rules (sometimes quite similar to D&D, like Palladium), ultimately competing for gamers dollars.

In my shop I observed during that time that the d20 logo had quite the adverse effect.
D&D3 fans were mostly interested in official stuff, or third party settings, gamers of other sytems were pissed that their publishers jumped the d20 bandwagon (L5R, 7S, Sovereign Stone, Deadlands), and many a game that probably would have found their customers if only it had used an original system remained unplayed (Shadowrun, the whole WoD, Ars Magica became a success or found their niche in their time, Stargate, Digital Burn, Armageddon 2098, Farscape, Dragonstar, Judge Dredd ... not so much).
The d20 connection was actively driving away more customers than it attracted.
But that might have been a German phenomenon.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445472Sorry, but that is just not true. The books (1st and 2nd edition) have no explanation of 3e's basics. It's not only that "4d6" character creation is missing; there is no listing of attributes, saving throws, basic spells (only a handful of added setting specific spells), basic feats, no explanation of how combat works - you just cannot play Midnight with only the Midnight setting book.

Hmmmn. I might be misremember it. Regardless, people play "Midnight," not "a D&D game set in Midnight."

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445472You are right that those new games probably took away sales from WotC, but that was the same situation before the OGL. There were always games tackling different genres (some not even competing with the default dungeon-type fantasy, like CoC), using different rules (sometimes quite similar to D&D, like Palladium), ultimately competing for gamers dollars.

Yes, but WotC didn't create that situation. It didn't hand them a copy of their toys and say, "Go nuts." Moreover, pre-OGL, there was still the "I gotta learn a whole new system" hurdle to overcome.

WotC's goal was to increase their market share by getting more people to play the D&D system and purchase, eventually, their D&D products. But what actually happened, because of how third party publishers used d20, was that more people played the system, but didn't buy WotC's products.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;445472But that might have been a German phenomenon.

No, but a) you named almost all of the products of that type (there was also d20 CoC), b) they didn't exactly have a huge mind share and market share to begin with, and c) they weren't exactly awesome translations.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;445495WotC's goal was to increase their market share by getting more people to play the D&D system and purchase, eventually, their D&D products. But what actually happened, because of how third party publishers used d20, was that more people played the system, but didn't buy WotC's products.

Originally, I believe there was more to it than it. I think WOTC originally intended true "open source" development with WOTC able to roll good ideas from the open content of third party publishers into future versions of WOTC D&D. Later on, after management changes, WOTC gave up on this idea for reasons I never have been able to figure out -- as by doing so they gave up a major advantage to them of publishing D&D under the OGL.

And there is a lot of third party open content under the OGL that they could have drawn from -- with no licensing costs. The OGL is a two-way street but WOTC elected to ignore the part of that street with free material coming their way. By doing this, they lost one of the two primary advantages of the OGL to them.  The loss of this advantage wasn't the fault of the OGL, it was the fault of their own decision(s).  

And yes, I know 90% of the third party open content was dreck, but the 10% that wasn't was still hundreds of pages of material.

Quote from: RandallS;445502Originally, I believe there was more to it than it. I think WOTC originally intended true "open source" development with WOTC able to roll good ideas from the open content of third party publishers into future versions of WOTC D&D. Later on, after management changes, WOTC gave up on this idea for reasons I never have been able to figure out -- as by doing so they gave up a major advantage to them of publishing D&D under the OGL.

This is exactly what kept me, for the most part, out of publishing for d20 or OGL. Let's say that I'm a small publisher that can afford to print 1-3,000 copies of a new game... and further, let's say, it's an unexpected runaway hit, selling out within the first month of release...

Now as I'm gearing up for a second limited (by my budget) print run, WOTC creates a similar supplement, only they do a print run of 20,000 and distribute it.

Those $$$ that would have went to my RPG darling publication are suddenly channeled into the new WOTC release that has the best features of my phenomenal new game, and the "official" support from the largest RPG publisher.

You would think it would be better to release the game as an Independent or Indie game release... however consider this from the U.S. copyright office:

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

Making games is an unprofitable activity simply because the game creators do not derive the benefits of protection enjoyed by *all* the other creators.

Reference:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html  (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html)

Quote from: GameDaddy;445527Making games is an unprofitable activity simply because the game creators do not derive the benefits of protection enjoyed by *all* the other creators.

Copyright was NEVER intended to protect ideas, only a specific incarnation of an idea. If you have a new and unique game idea, you can always PATENT it. Patents were intended to protect new and unique ideas (for much more limited times than copyrights).

Big business strives for the perfect "diddle" (as Edgar Allen Poe termed the science), but thermodynamics -- among other laws -- tend to impose less than ideal efficiency.

As Elliot Wilen pointed out, the market is inconveniently made up of human beings who have desires other than maximizing other people's profits. Thus, it is sometimes necessary actually to compete on grounds of value delivered.

It is a curious logic that considers that just because WotC has managed to make a fair bit of money from D&D for a few years, its methods are therefore perpetually the best. It is taken as an article of faith that nothing else could possibly be better, and that the old hands who are not imitating WotC just don't know their business.

Never mind that WotC has been making much more money, and for longer, with Magic: The Gathering. Never mind how that departs from the "edition churn" business model. Never mind the history not only of TSR but of so many companies and products in the hobby game industry's past half-century.

Quote from: RandallSAnd yes, I know 90% of the third party open content was dreck

That's just Sturgeon's Second Law in action.

I never got too many bad ones, since I only bought products that looked particularly interesting, or came from publishers with a proven track record (mainly Necromancer Games and Swords&Sorcery Studios in my case). Mongoose and Fast Forward Entertainment never looked promising in the first place; it was clear from the outset that the first was mass producing mediocrity and the second was run by the gaming scene's longest-lived hack. A lot of other product families had those alarm bells - basically most everything promising "12 new prestige classes" or "60 new feats". If people were more careful with their purchases instead of rushing in headfirst to build their "collection", they could have avoided a whole lot of disappointment.

The "success" of Paizo's model is largely due to the failure of WoTC's current model.  So really, all that Pathfinder does is prove that the 3e model is better than the 4e model.  Its not so much that Pathfinder is winning as that D&D is losing.  This is significant because we've yet to see a model that presents a new kind of success.  Its actually my hope (perhaps a vain hope, some would argue) that we'll ultimately see this new model from WoTC itself, once they finally decide to move on and get their house in order.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Spinachcat;445385Refocus the game for online play, web-enabled TV and console play.   Make it something you play on your tablet, smartphone and combine the power of graphics, music, sound F/X with the power of a human DM and human player interaction.

WotC could take D&D to where the kids actually are now and will be in the future, instead of expecting the kids to retrograde their lives to find D&D.

That was the plan with the VTT and perhaps even Gleemax. It ended in tears.

Quote from: xech;446376That was the plan with the VTT and perhaps even Gleemax. It ended in tears.

Sure, but so did the initial tablet pcs and Sony's ereader, but the ipad and the kindle are doing quite well now.  Lots of tech stuff has had to be tried more than one time in more than one way before they became successful.

Quote from: Aos;446381Sure, but so did the initial tablet pcs and Sony's ereader, but the ipad and the kindle are doing quite well now.  Lots of tech stuff has had to be tried more than one time in more than one way before they became successful.

Yep.  Diffusion of innovation is an unpredictable beast.

It's like going back to the early 90's and predicting the Internet and DVDs won't work because bulletin boards and laser disks never became popular in the mainstream.

Quote from: Aos;446381Sure, but so did the initial tablet pcs and Sony's ereader, but the ipad and the kindle are doing quite well now.  Lots of tech stuff has had to be tried more than one time in more than one way before they became successful.

Sony has billions of dollars to spend on R&D.  A hiccup of a few tens of millions is nothing to them, even now post "crash".

The only thing WotC has billions of is...atoms that make up the component parts of the office building they're in, I guess.

Also tablet PCs have filled a niche long before Jobs got a bug up his ass about selling expensive glass and aluminum coasters to soccer moms.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;446402Sony has billions of dollars to spend on R&D.  A hiccup of a few tens of millions is nothing to them, even now post "crash".

The only thing WotC has billions of is...atoms that make up the component parts of the office building they're in, I guess.

Also tablet PCs have filled a niche long before Jobs got a bug up his ass about selling expensive glass and aluminum coasters to soccer moms.

Wotc may not have the funds, but Hasbro sure does.  Selling to soccer moms is where the $ is.

I guess I don't understand the alternative theory here.

I don't even have kids and I know that every kid today is glued to their cell phone, Facebook, etc.  The current generation has never known a world without the Internet or home computers, and they do an awful lot of their social interaction over electronics.

Every company that has a remote chance of being successful is trying to figure out how to utilize that market.  That is the future.

Hoping kids stumble into a store and decide to read a giant book (or set of three) and get a bunch of friends together in person in order to play a game?  That is not really looking to be the future.  More and more, that's starting to look like the 80's equivalent of soapbox car races, stickball, and drive-in movies.

I just don't think pretending it is still 1984 is a good way to run a business.

Quote from: jgants;446566I guess I don't understand the alternative theory here.

I don't even have kids and I know that every kid today is glued to their cell phone, Facebook, etc.  The current generation has never known a world without the Internet or home computers, and they do an awful lot of their social interaction over electronics.

Every company that has a remote chance of being successful is trying to figure out how to utilize that market.  That is the future.

Hoping kids stumble into a store and decide to read a giant book (or set of three) and get a bunch of friends together in person in order to play a game?  That is not really looking to be the future.  More and more, that's starting to look like the 80's equivalent of soapbox car races, stickball, and drive-in movies.

I just don't think pretending it is still 1984 is a good way to run a business.

I think you are correct that the internet/computers/social media are a basic part of life now. I would guess the biggest hurdle for game companies in that respect would be cost. PDFs are easy enough. But anything that requires building software or programming is hard for even a successful RPG company. However, I suppose if you already have someone on board who knows about that stuff it may be easy enough to do.

Out of curiosity, what is it you specifically think RPG companies need to do in this respect?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;446592Out of curiosity, what is it you specifically think RPG companies need to do in this respect?

Use some kind of simple, interactive Flash or Silverlight or whatever type animation to teach the core rules.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;446619Use some kind of simple, interactive Flash or Silverlight or whatever type animation to teach the core rules.

Seanchai

I'd actually go one further and divorce the mechanics from it even more - have the mechanics be totally dictated by whatever software interface. Want to climb a wall? The computer randomizes the outcome based on the conditions of ones character (skill, attributes, whatever) and what the GM gives as additional difficulty conditions. Make the game less about chart reference and more about interpreting the outcomes in a given situation.

Would that be a bitch to program? Probably. I can't imagine that the code that runs Facebook is all that simple, either.

Games Workshop still sells miniatures. It has not gone digital. But I understand why it manages to be successful in doing this. It somehow sells art. Each miniature you paint may be considered some cool art piece to decorate your room with and display to your friends.

What tabletop rpgs need to sell is something of tangible value. Pathfinder APs may be succeeding in this, as they are produced with the goal of being fun and entertaining to read. There is value to this.

D&D style tabletop rpg rules are not something new and there is a ton of it, free for everybody on the internet (google "srd"). So, D&D rules, unfortunately are not a fad anymore and have no tangible value.

I guess, this is why Wotc tries to sell the D&D product as a service or as a board game that sells as physical bits and pieces that you can hold in your hands.

Quote from: misterguignol;445133Exactly.  The open license did two things that were bad for business:

1) The core product you need to play the game?  99% available for free on the Internet.  That had to cut into sales of the PHB, DMG, and MM.

2) Opened the floodgates for a deluge of absolutely crappy 3rd party books.  Yes, there were diamonds in the rough, but I cannot fathom how anyone pines for the days of shelves stocked with a multitude of poorly designed and executed d20 books.  Hell, even WotC had trouble with quality control in-house; 3rd party publishers were often much, much worse.

Agree 100% with point #1, and I think somebody at WotC vastly overestimated the appeal of sticking "d20 license" on 3rd-party products for point #2. Few publishers bothered; it has all the problems of writing for a licensed property, and pretty much none of the benefits (if I write a book that has "Star Wars" on it, somebody's going to pick it up; the brand recognition is high. "d20 License" didn't have anywhere near that brand recognition...

Quote from: Spinachcat;445385Better yet, fuck the tabletop.   Leave it to Paizo and the 80s kids.  

Refocus the game for online play, web-enabled TV and console play.   Make it something you play on your tablet, smartphone and combine the power of graphics, music, sound F/X with the power of a human DM and human player interaction.

WotC could take D&D to where the kids actually are now and will be in the future, instead of expecting the kids to retrograde their lives to find D&D.

Fuck man, make me feel old! ;P
But I have to agree with you: the only reason MMO's haven't already completely destroyed the PnP RPG market, is because they haven't evolved (yet) to give the same sandbox experience.
Once they do, I think it's game over for the majority of PnP RPG's.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;446592I think you are correct that the internet/computers/social media are a basic part of life now. I would guess the biggest hurdle for game companies in that respect would be cost. PDFs are easy enough. But anything that requires building software or programming is hard for even a successful RPG company. However, I suppose if you already have someone on board who knows about that stuff it may be easy enough to do.

Out of curiosity, what is it you specifically think RPG companies need to do in this respect?

Full integration for one thing.  One of the biggest problems I've seen so far is that all their stuff is so siloed.  It's such an old-fashioned way of marketing, it's almost retro.

The books and electronic tools don't appear to be built or even designed together.  Why weren't they?  Why weren't monsters developed with the same rules that building your own monsters would be?

Why did they develop Gleemax but then fail to integrate it with anything?  

Why do the electronic tools still not integrate with Facebook or Twitter? (even my tax software does that)  Even email?  Even the new character builder completely ignores almost all benefits of using a cloud (yeah, they use it for data mining; but no thought was given about how to leverage the technology for users).

Why was there not a software suite capable of rendering character images that would be integrated with character builder?

Why wasn't a virtual tabletop, character builder, and adventure tools integrated from day 1?  Most of that technology has been around for years.

Where are the tools for the DM?  Why didn't even bother to integrate a better version of the terrible "bonus tools" in with the character builder and adventure tools?

If you make a game centered around minis and maps, why weren't mini releases ever tied into the actual game releases?  Why weren't the maps?  Why weren't more adventures mapped to use the actual dungeon tiles?  Why isn't there a tool for making custom maps?  Or custom tokens that you can print?

Why don't they have a solution that works for all of the common technologies?  If you aren't developing something that can be used from a PC, a phone, and a tablet, you are doing it wrong.

How about embracing the modding concept with the actual electronic tools instead of just the GSL stuff for the rules?  Modding software is quite popular.


Really, I could spend all day thinking up ways to leverage their product lines through integration.  Sadly, the WotC marketing department appears to be staffed by the least imaginative people possible (kind of ironic, really).

Well, that and they clearly aren't ready yet to make the kind of real investment necessary to move from being primarily book based to being more of an electronic publisher.

The electronic publisher idea isn't a bad one.  You just can't do it halfway and expect results, though.  The expectations out there for software are quite high now.


EDIT: One more thought - where are the templates and tools for making your own official D&D campaign websites?  There are plenty of free ones out there but nothing official that you could actually integrate with electronic tools.  They could have even made some side cash reselling domains and hosting space - call it a DDI Deluxe subscription and just tack on some extra bucks for it.  

Seriously, does anyone over at WotC marketing even think about these kind of things?

Another thought - I'm going to go crazy here and actually bring my post back to the OP.  :)

The original letter writer may be a bit weepy, but the guy does actually have a point.

WotC should have had a program to promote 3rd party adventures better; I just wouldn't say they should have done it for free.  ;)

You could call it GSL Deluxe or the Preferred Partners Program or whatever - charge them a subscription fee to list their products on the site, have links to a sales area for pdfs (with a per-sale commission or something), and most importantly - give them a subscription to the electronic tools SDK (with SDK support included) so they can create packages that customers can load into their programs that would integrate the material - like gadgets or browser add-ins, etc.

I think the people in the OP rather hilariously and ridiculously misunderstood the level of interest WoTC has in 3rd party publishers at this point (hint: It is none, now that the plan to charge them thousands of dollars fell through).

RPGPundit

Quote from: Novastar;446968But I have to agree with you: the only reason MMO's haven't already completely destroyed the PnP RPG market, is because they haven't evolved (yet) to give the same sandbox experience.
Once they do, I think it's game over for the majority of PnP RPG's.

I've been saying this for years. MMO's are limited by their own programming limitations. Tabletop will trump an MMO's limitations every time. At least until those limitations are removed from MMOs. This will happen gradually as tech improves and better AI is developed.

The holodeck is the future of the tabletop RPG. It probably won't happen in my lifetime, but I can see it happening eventually.

Bah, the holodeck.  I'll be on that starship still pulling out the paper and pens. Unless you can invent a holodeck that can wire directly into my brain, and create exactly what I imagine without me having to try to settle for a programmed set of images, it would not be the same.

In fact, you could argue that unless it could do the same for each player so that each player saw my set-up but with the aesthetics as he imagined it, it wouldn't be the same.

RPGPundit

Exactly. I make my primary income from Computer Support. I lurve tech stuff. However, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, will ever replace sitting around a table interacting with friends. Doesn't matter if it is a RPG, board game or Card Game, hanging out with like minded geeks playing a game is what it is all about.

Gamers are social creatures. To use a tired quote, "Demented and Sad, but Social"...

As far as the OP though, I don't think WOTC should promote the competition but I don't think there's anything they can do about it other than try to produce better game products than the 3rd Party companies. As far as the 3rd party companies? Make better product and then run a business, like a business. You may be able to produce the best thing ever made for a game but if you can't run a business then don't give up your day job!

Quote from: RPGPunditBah, the holodeck. I'll be on that starship still pulling out the paper and pens.

Someone else might be on the holodeck pulling out virtual paper and pens!

I think most people who preferred the digital experience went to it long ago, even before graphical MMOGs took over from MUDs. Heck, I remember meeting people who were into Wizardry or Ultima or other computer games but not D&D-type games. The "holodeck" conceptual ideal also got partly realized in LARP (some Brits, IIRC, even going to the extent of advertising clubhouses in castles).

I think the major appeal of using paper and pencil, of using figurines and scenery on a table, of talking even by telephony, has for a long time been the visceral experience. Some people, even if they don't outright prefer it, appreciate it in its own right.

Quote from: Novastar;446968[T]he only reason MMO's haven't already completely destroyed the PnP RPG market, is because they haven't evolved (yet) to give the same sandbox experience. Once they do, I think it's game over for the majority of PnP RPG's.

I don't really believe so. Sure, many more people will go for the MMO instead of the tabletop experience, because it's easier, can be experienced any time you want on your own individual schedule, but tabletop RPGs won't completely disappear, even then. There is still the genuine RL experience that you get to live out of playing on a tabletop. You manipulate real dice, sit around a real table with real people besides yourself, crack open a pack of cheetos, and so on. It's like saying in a single breath that electronic documents will replace physical books and that Skype will replace face-to-face conversation. It's not going to happen, no matter how subtle the illusionism of the electronic medium becomes.

Who needs concerts of theater when we've got mp3's and movies?  Who needs parties and social games when we've got raids and clan matches?

Oh wait...

Quote from: Benoist;447313I don't really believe so. Sure, many more people will go for the MMO instead of the tabletop experience, because it's easier, can be experienced any time you want on your own individual schedule, but tabletop RPGs won't completely disappear, even then. There is still the genuine RL experience that you get to live out of playing on a tabletop. You manipulate real dice, sit around a real table with real people besides yourself, crack open a pack of cheetos, and so on. It's like saying in a single breath that electronic documents will replace physical books and that Skype will replace face-to-face conversation. It's not going to happen, no matter how subtle the illusionism of the electronic medium becomes.

The same can be said of casinos.

Casinos are still big business.  The nearby ones still have fully packed parking lots, even during weekdays and during a recession.

Online casino games haven't put them out of business.

As a hardcore computer gamer, I still have fun in casinos, and I rather loathe the table games.

Slot machines have REALLY come a long way the last few years, I've been looking forever for decent emulators for such games. Closest I have are Reel Deal games, which, even when really good, aren't as much fun as casino slots.