Lago's Kickass D&D-Book Marketing Strategy!

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:30 pm

Well, let's take a step back from bashing 4E for a moment and let's talk about the marketing things that 4E did correctly.

I think the biggest smart move that 4th Edition did was to make Dragon and Dungeon content respectable again. Granted, that stuff is still on-the-whole spottier than stuff released in actual books, but from a marketing perspective it is a huge, HUGE improvement over the state of these magazines in 3rd Edition. I don't know any DM who let any content from those magazines in without a line item veto in 3rd (and some banned it outright) but most of the DMs, including myself, let people shamelessly crib material from those things.

And in this regard I think that the biggest factor for this is automatically bundling content from those magazines with the Character Builder. People already have a bias against players who bring in unfamiliar books or material but if the content shows side-by-side from expansion options people already trust then it gets past that mental barrier. And if it's done enough times people go 'sure, why not' when they actually ask to use stuff from those magazines.

This is precisely why I think that 5th Edition should not get released until they have a Character Builder already in the rafters and that they should immediately release Dragon and Dungeon material with 5E in the first month. It's very important that the designers establish trust in those articles. Ideally, these issues should be written up and playtested months in advance so you don't have to worry about any embarrassing hiccups in the first few critical months.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:37 pm

The other marketing thing I think 4E did correctly, as I've talked about before, was to have a celebrity fanbase interested in the game. The Penny Arcade thing is brilliant but I think that they can go even further than that.

The important thing with this is that your celebrities should NOT be paid shills. They need to genuinely show an interest in your game beforehand. If you have to convince, say, Scott Kurtz to play your game with real cash money then it will show and it will really hurt your product. The Penny Arcade thing works only because Gabe and Tycho are actual fans of D&D.

So instead of actually cutting them checks you need to stroke their egos. You post their play sessions, you crow about their fanart, you hand them copies of books weeks in advance (and generate advertising buzz from your site), you give them special seats in conventions, and you showcase their custom material.

That said, I know that Brian Clevinger was interested in 3E and that James Rolfe is at least interested in 2E. You guys have any other Internet celebrities in mind?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:41 pm

Finally, videro james.

That facebook D&D app is good. There's not much to say about it other than D&D should release one for 5th Edition. But because you're trying to get people interested in the brand rather than the actual game there's no need to have it conform to the rules other than nominally. The Facebook (or whatever social networking thing is popular by then) application should be released about 4-6 weeks in advance of the release of the first book. It should showcase the new races, classes, and monsters.

And you really want a team of good writers for this thing, too. I've played the facebook app and while the encounters are acceptable they get really repetitive on your 3rd or 4th playthrough.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:48 pm

Doom314 wrote:Heh, cute.

Anyway, I think DnD4.0 might be a bit more viable as a turn-based computer game (yes, I know the market is probably crap for such a thing, but the keyword is 'probably'), instead of the 'real time' foolishness that is pure anathema to a tactical miniatures game.

DnD4.0 combat is a slogging mess at the higher levels, but 'the numbers just get bigger' isn't a problem for a computer. I rather wonder why some fool in his garage hasn't sat down and programmed something semi-viable by now.

Same reason so few people play it, even this long in the product life style.

No one cares enough.

Hell, even compare the hate and you'll see this.

3.5 evokes lots and lots of nerdrage over fighter vs wizard, what constitutes level appropriateness, and all manner of other things. Even when it's being actively attacked, you can see that people care.

With 4.Fail it's more like blah blah blah horse archers blah blah blah infinite damage loops blah blah blah immune to padded sumo. It can't even motivate people to truly hate it, even if they hate the people lying about it.

If 4.Fail was a person and not a thing, I would be seriously concerned that a number of people were about to murder it for that reason alone.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:08 pm

NickLance wrote:I cannot disagree with you on this. My DM tried to redo the Day of Thunder and Fu Leng got crapped on within 3 rounds.

But what's your beef with the Anvil of Despair?

Anvil of Despair was the beginning of the Toturi wanking that eventually gave us The Hidden Emperor. Basically after Forbidden Knowledge, they announced that they were going to do a thing where people winning tournaments would change the way the story unfolded. So they had this big event: Beiden Pass. And in that event Toturi was nominally working with the Dragon Clan and they were going to have a big showdown with the Crab (who had been kicking all kinds of ass up to then, based on a strategy I helped design).

And... the Crab won. They won hard, and they won a lot. It was a total fucking route. Because the Dragon have a whole Turtle World thing going, and it does not stand up to aggressive honorable oni dueling machines, because a relentless attack just isn't thrown off by delaying tactics the way a charge-based blitz attack is.

So what did Alderac do? Well, they had the Dragon clan sword break, but Toturi fucking won the battle in the official story line anyway. And the Crab turned evil for having been picking on their favorite fanwank faction. And then Toturi got his own army, and his own stronghold box, and a pony. In short, Alderac completely betrayed the entire concept of having player directed story outcomes. In order to fanwank all over the story's "hero" - who was Akodo Toturi. And he went on to have sex with the prettiest lady in the empire, get trained as a ninja, get special dragon powers, kill the dark lord, and become emperor. And all of it had to do with the bullshit choices to Mary Sue him up after Forbidden Knowledge.

The number one thing you could do to improve Rokugan would be to remove Toturi completely from the setting. Which would be most noticeable from Anvil of Despair onwards, because instead of having a Toturi's Army of ragtag plucky heroes who are always right and fight for the people and fart unicorns, you wouldn't do that. Because that was fucking retarded.

Orion wrote:One question that arises when talking about Role protection is: What if any kinds of "theme" parties do we want to cater to?

One thing I liked about the Combat Role/Power Source division from D&D 4 was the ability to have diverse and balanced parties with a clear theme. I liked that Paladin, Cleric, Avenger, Invoker was supposed to be a viable party and so was Warden, Shaman, Barbarian, Druid.

The only reason that power sources in 4e don't make any fucking difference at all is because they don't make any difference at all. There is no logical consequence to playing an all "Divine" or "Arcane" party, because each individual character has no effects whatsoever from the fact that they are "Divine" or "Arcane". Any time you're having some character choice make a difference of some kind, then it's going to impact the effects of the choices of other players. On account of it's actually doing something, and that is going to make people re-evaluate their strategies and tactics in some way.

Now personally, if making "Team Dark" supoptimal is the "price" I have to pay to get rid of the "Five Paladins of Doom" team-build, I am more than willing to make that "sacrifice." Although if you put some effort into it, it seems like you can still make a pretty decent "Red Faction" where everyone uses Red Magic. You have a Red Buff spamming War Chanter Bard and a Red Debuff spamming Magma Wizard and a couple of fire spewing Warlock and bomb chucking Artificer who just do Red damage and you've got yourself a team that uses almost all Red effects and rarely runs into stacking problems.

But I genuinely think that people going off and doing something other than what the other players are doing should be encouraged.

MdH wrote:So would powers look like this?

It might be better to not qualify things as buffs or debuffs and merely call them "effects" so that you don't get people "debuff buffing" themselves by transforming their Psion into stone (limited physical movement but increased resilience "debuff"). Tactically, a Fire Shield is going to be put on an ally and a Sicken is going to be levied on an enemy. If PCs can use Fireshields to rescue teammates from blinding it makes the game more tactical rather than less.

-Username17

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:44 pm

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:54 pm

ggroy wrote: Wonder why exactly they're going back to a Mentzer BECMI model.

The "logic" is presumably:

"Core rulebooks (PHB + DMG + MM) sell well. So let's crank out new core rulebooks!"

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:05 pm

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:09 pm

Lago wrote:I think the biggest smart move that 4th Edition did was to make Dragon and Dungeon content respectable again. Granted, that stuff is still on-the-whole spottier than stuff released in actual books, but from a marketing perspective it is a huge, HUGE improvement over the state of these magazines in 3rd Edition. I don't know any DM who let any content from those magazines in without a line item veto in 3rd (and some banned it outright) but most of the DMs, including myself, let people shamelessly crib material from those things.

Very mixed bag there. They made Dragon content respectable, but does anyone even know what Dungeon content is any more? I used to read maybe 2 out of 3 Dungeon Magazines, and now I don't. he first Dungeon compilation is coming out in Hardcover in May. It's 160 pages, and costs like 30 bucks. And no one cares. Because Dungeon went out of circulation wholesale.

Yeah, slapping "Official D&D Content!" on Dragon and porting the bonus options and classes into the character builder software with regular patches is a great idea. It gets people to think of Dragon as official content, which allows them to use it as an actual testing ground for new ideas. You can throw some out there curve balls and people will report on how it went.

But seriously, Dungeon needs to be a hardcopy, magazine length format. It's basically "D&D Storytime" and people need to be able to read it on the bus. Because otherwise they won't read it at all.

Lago wrote:You guys have any other Internet celebrities in mind?

Well, Phil Foglio is a D&D nerd. Hell, he used to be a featured artist in Dragon Magazine. You could easily get some D&D tie-ins with Girl Genius. Just say you'd like to do that, and both he and his wife would be all over that. Even more so if you gave a rant about how with the mainlining of the artificer and the warforged you were going in a more "steampunk" direction, and would they like to aid in concepting some Dragon Magazine expansions for those? And of course, Randy Milholland has been a nerd for a long, long time. Just show up to his door and say:

Rep: Randy Milholland?
Randy: Yes?
Rep: I'm here from Wizard's of the Coast. We've decided to repeatedly rape your childhood. And we'd like to watch, and if possible film your expression while you, in turn, watch us do it.
Randy: What?
Rep: We're making a new edition of D&D, and we'd like you to preview it.

Let's be real here: there is no way he could turn down an offer like that. Hell, he'd probably make a comic of that exact encounter. And it would drive interest whether he liked the new edition or not!

-Username17

TavishArtair · Post by **TavishArtair** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:11 pm

Excuse me!

Girl Genius is a gaslamp fantasy. Not steampunk.

Thank you, that is all.

( He'd still totally be all over that after Kaja corrected you on that point. )

Nicklance · Post by **Nicklance** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:01 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
NickLance wrote:I cannot disagree with you on this. My DM tried to redo the Day of Thunder and Fu Leng got crapped on within 3 rounds.

But what's your beef with the Anvil of Despair?
Anvil of Despair was the beginning of the Toturi wanking that eventually gave us The Hidden Emperor. Basically after Forbidden Knowledge, they announced that they were going to do a thing where people winning tournaments would change the way the story unfolded. So they had this big event: Beiden Pass. And in that event Toturi was nominally working with the Dragon Clan and they were going to have a big showdown with the Crab (who had been kicking all kinds of ass up to then, based on a strategy I helped design).

And... the Crab won. They won hard, and they won a lot. It was a total fucking route. Because the Dragon have a whole Turtle World thing going, and it does not stand up to aggressive honorable oni dueling machines, because a relentless attack just isn't thrown off by delaying tactics the way a charge-based blitz attack is.

So what did Alderac do? Well, they had the Dragon clan sword break, but Toturi fucking won the battle in the official story line anyway. And the Crab turned evil for having been picking on their favorite fanwank faction. And then Toturi got his own army, and his own stronghold box, and a pony. In short, Alderac completely betrayed the entire concept of having player directed story outcomes. In order to fanwank all over the story's "hero" - who was Akodo Toturi. And he went on to have sex with the prettiest lady in the empire, get trained as a ninja, get special dragon powers, kill the dark lord, and become emperor. And all of it had to do with the bullshit choices to Mary Sue him up after Forbidden Knowledge.

The number one thing you could do to improve Rokugan would be to remove Toturi completely from the setting. Which would be most noticeable from Anvil of Despair onwards, because instead of having a Toturi's Army of ragtag plucky heroes who are always right and fight for the people and fart unicorns, you wouldn't do that. Because that was fucking retarded.

Oh right, Toturi.

I think its an even bigger stretch to have his illegitimate son Kaneka be brought up as if he's bloody Lancelot just so you can have a nicer round number in the Four Winds arc of the card game.

And darn you for breaking the Dragon like that. My friends were bitching about getting zerg rushed when they're desperately trying to gun for Enlightenment, but then again Dragons do turtle alot, so I guess its fair that we got blitzed like hell.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:04 pm

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:37 pm

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:48 pm

ggroy wrote:WotC just updated the catalog with the newly announced 4E releases.

That wrote:Player Essentials: Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms - This essential supplement for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game presents exciting new builds for the game’s most popular classes: the cleric, the druid, the paladin, the ranger, and the warlock.

Player Essentials: Heroes of the Fallen Lands - This essential player product for the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game presents exciting new builds for the most iconic classes: the cleric, the fighter, the ranger, the rogue, and the wizard.

So I guess people dig on druids more than warlords? And clerics most of all?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:18 pm

Anyway, assuming you went for something like this:

...which I don't actually think you should because it is directly associated with Final Fantasy. But you can get something close enough to that while preserving your D&D cred by renaming "Wind" to "Air" and swapping "Light" out for "Wood." Which would give you: [mrow color=blue][color=white]Water[/color] [mrow color=red][color=white]Fire[/color] [mrow color=sienna][color=white]Earth[/color] [mrow color=gray][color=white]Air[/color] [mrow color=olive][color=white]Wood[/color] [mrow color=black][color=white]Dark[/color] [mrow color=yellow][color=black]Thunder[/color] [mrow color=iceblue][color=black]Cold[/color]

But regardless, there are some things that need to be kept in mind: People aren't going to have a lot of choices about what their subjobs are going to do, and they aren't going to always mention what their subjobs even are (remember that players will usually try to convey things in two words - so if they are a Lightning Warlock or a Warchanter Bard, that might be all they say. What this means is that the subjobs should be providing abilities that have limited or no role protection problems. That means that summons, heals, and damaging attacks would be the standard, with adjuncts being single target effects. Because it's not as big of a deal if your one-person cripple effect doesn't stack with another player's debuffs as it is if your mass-effect powers don't stack - because in the event of single-target effects you can always split your targets (which with the right kinds of debuffs isn't even a bad plan).

So you'd have something like:
Gish:

Rune Knight (Earth Buffing, Tested Group I)
Thane of Winter (Cold Debuffing, Tested Group II
Psychic Warrior (Water Buffing, Tested Group III)

Hero:

Questing Hero (Thunder Debuffing, Tested Group I)
Inspiring Champion (Thunder Buffing, Tested Group II)
Avenger (Air Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Ranger:
- Skirmisher (Air Debuffing, Tested Group I)
- Earthblood Ravager (Earth Debuffing, Tested Group II
- Nature's Wrath (Wood Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Monk:
- Brawler (Fire Debuffing, Tested Group I)
- Serene Master (Water Buffing, Tested Group II
- Mage Slayer (Air Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Paladin:
- Bastion of Conviction (Earth Buffing, Tested Group I)
- Beacon of Hope (Earth Buffing, Tested Group II
- Smiting Champion (Earth Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Druid:
- Thorns (Wood Debuffing, Tested Group I)
- Storm (Air Debuffing, Tested Group II
- Earthgrasp (Earth Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Necromancer:
- Vampirism (Dark Debuffing, Tested Group I)
- Words of Doom (Dark Debuffing, Tested Group II
- Dark Grasp (Dark Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Psion:
- Charlatan (Water Debuffing, Tested Group I)
- Telepath (Water Buffing, Tested Group II
- Teleknetic (Air Debuffing, Tested Group III)
Bard:
- War Chanter (Fire Buffing, Tested Group I)
- Prevaricator (Air Buffing, Tested Group II
- Life Singer (Wood Buffing, Tested Group III)
That kind of thing.

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:13 pm

So, a couple of notes.

First, with the exception of necromancers, your schema seems to *encourage* stacking classes, not discourage them.

The "band of Monks" team with a Brawler, Serene master, and Mage Slayer has not stacking problems, and covers every field position: it has a frontliner, flanker, and artillery character.

On the other hand, the fact that a party contains a Ranger, a Monk, and a Wizard doesn't tell you whether it's balanced. You might have three "ranged" characters with nothing to hide behind. You might find that the Skirmish Ranger and the Mage Slayer Monk are both Air Debuffers.

In short, to create a balanced party, characters need to do more than check what class other people are playing, they need to memorize what every build does. I am concerned.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:37 pm

I'm afraid I don't follow. Just because a character Path option benefits from being run with a certain subclass, doesn't automatically mean it's going to be in that subclass's shtick.

If a character's subclass is in a certain group, that means that the main focus of the class will be of that group. The Path the class takes gives it a sub-focus of the other group, which can then be bolstered by a subclass that works in that group. So:

The Hero is Group 1. His focus is getting up close and stabbing people in the face. He specs Avenging Hero, which gives him a subset of abilities that allow him to fuck up people not paying attention to him. So he would get a mark like 4e but not shit, and some limb crushing debuffs. He'd be tested with the Rogue, Wizard, Warlock, and Artificer. This means we need to balance his abilities so that being able to play hide and shank, drop splash damage battlefield control effects, shoot elemental damage with a buddy, and chug potions while flinging acid flasks are all things that synergize well with that focus.

On that note, I would make sure that each path has other damage/buff/debuff colors in the pocket.

EDIT: Some clarification. The way I see the group setup is that each class is in a group, and each Path gives that class a subgroup. So a Group 1 character has paths that give them abilities that synergize with either Group 1, Group 2, or Group 3's general purpose. That means a Questing Hero would be better served picking something that helps him beat more face in, an Inspiring Hero would be better served picking something that allows him to hang back and rally, and an Avenging Hero would be better served picking something that bolsters his role as sapper.

I see the color wheel buff/debuff situation the same way: the class is good at a color on either the buff end or the debuff end. The Path adds a secondary color and effect to focus on. With that, all three of the Necromancer's Paths shouldn't be Dark type. From a character and a mechanical standpoint, they should least have a Cold type "still and frigid as the grave" sort of life choice from the word go.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 4:37 am

Mask_De_H wrote: He specs Avenging Hero, which gives him a subset of abilities that allow him to fuck up people not paying attention to him.

That sounds more like a rogue. Wouldn't the avenging hero specialize in fucking up people who have hurt her or her allies?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 4:48 am

As I understand it, the current plan calls for the Hero SUBCLASS to be inherently melee-based, not the Hero BASE class. In fact, the Hero BASE Class *must* have an all-ranged build to allow for Hero/Psions, and a flanking build to allow for Hero/Bards or something.

This means "Arcane Archer" is one of your 3 Gish Builds. Good luck writing your melee Psion though.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:42 pm

Orion wrote:This means "Arcane Archer" is one of your 3 Gish Builds. Good luck writing your melee Psion though.

3.0 tried with the Str-based egoist... they just screwed it all up. It could be a viable concept, though. This could also just be a psi-gish, like a psychic warrior.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:27 pm

Orion wrote:As I understand it, the current plan calls for the Hero SUBCLASS to be inherently melee-based, not the Hero BASE class. In fact, the Hero BASE Class *must* have an all-ranged build to allow for Hero/Psions, and a flanking build to allow for Hero/Bards or something.

This means "Arcane Archer" is one of your 3 Gish Builds. Good luck writing your melee Psion though.

It's not necessarily melee-based, but frontline ready. A character doesn't need to get a bunch of melee attacks - or any melee attacks in order to make getting a subHero's sword strike and challenge be useful. All that really means is that you're going to be putting yourself in harm's way where you'll be wanting a sword to fall back on if and when you get swarmed.

For example: if your big trick was colorspray from basic 3e D&D, having a melee backup would be great. Because chances are pretty good that after you run up and brain fry a group that at least one enemy is going to countercharge you. So a group I Psion need not be full of melee powers (although of course they could be what with empathic touches and power auras and shit), they just need powers like Psionic Blast that put them in front of, or at least not protected by, the other frontliners in the team. Now, in 3e D&D those kinds of attacks are actually flanker attacks, because they are so exactly predictable in their area. But if you made i a bi squishier - say the spaces on the edge were "partial" and you rolled a die to see if people were "in" or "out" - then you wouldn' want to throw that kind of effect into melee, and then you'd want to use it from in front of the other PCs and have some kind of frontline protection available (either from your own subjob or by immediately fading back behind another PC).

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:03 pm

So. Release dates for 5E.

I personally think that the first three books should all be available by X-Mas, but not too far out in advance. I'd say that you should start releasing books at Thanksgiving week and then release a new core rulebook a week so that a week before Christmas everyone can buy every book. I don't know what the fuck 3E/4E was thinking, repeatedly not releasing their big guns in time for Christmas, but I'd like to avoid that.

Similarly, I think that setting books should come out to roughly match the season they're released on. I'm willing to be contradicted on, but I think that people are more likely to buy a Dark Necropolis book on October and a Deserts of Desolation book in August.

Also, one thing that I think that 3E D&D dropped the ball on and then completely ended up fucking up with is Customer Support. Frankly, it's a huge joke; I think people realized this at around the time you'd get a ton of contradictory answers for asking about anything related to stealth or polymorph. 4E has not exactly done anything to re-engender that trust, mostly because they cannot stick to the cardinal rule which is THOU SHALT NOT CONTRADICT THE ANSWERS OF OTHER CS PEOPLE UNLESS THE PREVIOUS ANSWER WAS BLATANTLY WRONG.

So here's how this shit SHOULD get done.

1) Fan e-mails/phones in/whatevers a complaint or question.
2) Customer Support types up a reply and immediately indexes it on a database.
3) In the future, if a fan has a complaint or question the first thing CS should do is search for the topic to see if someone else has already given an answer.
4) If there's a pre-existing answer, use that and stick to it, even if there's a legitimately ambiguous question to it (like grapples and bonuses), unless what's stored is completely wrong.
5) This is the most important step. At the end of every month you have a named game designer step in and look at all of the questions/reponses flagged 'ambiguous' and they give their stamp of approval on it or they adjust it. If they have to adjust it because of ambiguity or personal interpretation, put it in the goddamn FAQ and update it.

Game designers don't give a lot of thought to credibility, but they should. Skip Williams pretty much destroyed his career once he lost his sagelike aura. Andy Collins couldn't even bother and just abdicated the Sage role while letting the credibility of the FAQ and sage circle the drain; the 4E FAQ for the PHB has had only one update in frickin' months (the ongoing damage question). I mean, Jesus, one of the biggest selling points of D&D is that you can have a game where everyone is on the same page. I know you're a lazy rat bastard skidmark on grandma's diapers, Collins, but this is basic marketing.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat May 01, 2010 4:55 am

Earlier in this thread (and other ones) Frank and I talked about having a relase schedule for 5th Edition that encompassed the goals of:

A) Being clearly distinct from each other. No garbage like Martial Power and Martial Power 2.
B) Having material in it that will make people want to plunder stuff from it no matter what their character build is.
C) Have a large enough volume of material so that you can release books at a rate of one every three months.
D) Grade your material so that your primo stuff doesn't get overshadowed by crap like Dragons of Eberron.

And I think I came up with a possible release schedule. 3rd Edition did much of the work for me already.

Manual of the Planes: This book will be written pretty much just like it was in 3E. No changes here.

Oriental Adventures: Pretty much just like it was in 3E, too.

Epic-Level Handbook: Obviously the mechanics of the book will be much changed. And a greater emphasis will be made on coming up with suitably-epic adventures for the PCs (there will have to be TWO adventures, one for starting epic characters and another for epic + 3-5 levels). The NPC list was a fine idea, but a little less wanking would be nice.

Book of Vile Darkness: Also pretty much the same. However, there should be less of an emphasis on gross-out and more of an emphasis on grimdark. Less Drakengard, more Vampire.

Arms and Equipment Guide: Obviously, there will still be some magical items and mounts and combat equipment and all that to slake the thirst of powergamers. However, there will also be a lot of stuff in the book about just generic items in GENERAL. Stuff like ships, the price of blocks of salt, plenty of information on traps, and obscure-but-fun items to have in it like the spyglass and sextant.

Enemies and Allies: I made a thread stating the changes that would have to be made, but definitely have one of these books out.

Stronghold Builder's Guide: The iteration of this book for 5th Edition should be a lot like the 3E version. However, there needs to be more of an emphasis made on strongholds or buildings accessible to low-level heroes. There's no reason why a 4th level (out of 20) hero shouldn't have a nice wooden fortress armed with competent guards if they really care about such a thing.

Unearthed Arcana: This book obviously needs to come near the end of 5E's lifecycle. Basically this book is a compilation of houserules and playtest feedback accumulated throughout the edition.

Deities and Demigods: Less wanking to invincible supergods, more wrestling Amon to the ground and giving him a shot in the pills. Awww yeah boy.

Okay, now for some other grade 'A' material.

Cityscape: Sort of like the 3E book, but completely different. You can read in this very thread the fail of this sourcebook and the suggestions for what it should be.

Maltheopia: This book will be the 'evil' counterpart to Cityscape. This book will have a bunch of stuff on living and surviving in evil cities (especially as a good character). There will be lots of suggestions for antagonists and organizations one might expect in Killfuck Soulshitterville. There will also be a lot of evil-city threats such as urban wendigos.

Wildlands: For our terrain books, writing compellingly about grasslands and wastelands is probably the hardest. So instead of wanking to the terrain, this is the book where we build and describe a fictional empire. In this thread I talked about creating an evil barbarian empire. This book will be primarily highlighting whatever we come up with here and will take great pains to detail about how savage and exotic the culture is.

Silent Desert: Like Sandstorm, but a little less ass. Like Wildlands, there is only inherently so much you can do to make the Saharan desert interesting so this book will mostly focus on the cool shit you can find in deserts and the organizations rather than the desert itself. I know you can talk about other deserts like the American West but we're saving that for another book.

Frozen Frontier: Like Frostburn, but a little less ass. You can do significantly more with the terrain in this setting than the other two because you also have shit like forests and mountains and underground ice palaces to talk about.

Field of Blades: This book should focus on fantasy warfare. Remember that blurb at the back of Complete Warrior that deconstructs typical European medieval-fighting with D&D mechanics? Like this; the book should give the whole Bronze/Iron Age wars the old D&D once-over. I'm talking artwork of goblins-on-worgs shooting down a fleeing troupe of halflings who had their line busted while gnomes prepare an alchemy ambush. In the very likely event that we don't get a good mass-combat minigame working in the basic rulebooks, it should go in here.

Forever Forest: Our (duh) forest book. This should be the easiest book to write because when you think of standard fantasy terrain, you think of fucking forests. Also you can have some swamps all up in here, too.

New Horizons: In this book we introduce some Steampunky Gaslamp Fantasy elements to the game. It's a new era and shit, airships are being built, people experiment with democracy seriously, and horror of horrors we actually have GUNS and shit! Oh, the humanity! But basically this book is supposed to be the setting which highlights a fictional transition from the Late Medieval Europe to Late Reinassance Europe. The theme of the book is almost completely exterminating the points of darkness still remaining in the world what with science and population growth and all and the focus on exploring the last frontiers.

Apocalypto: Blatant thumb in the eye to Mel Gibson aside, this book details either the coming of an apocalypse or the revival of society from a near-apocalypse. I don't mean shit like the Roman Empire collapsing; those aren't apocalypses because even though a lot of knowledge was lost and people ended up worse off, it's not like civilization went away. No, I'm talking shit like fantasy global warming or the zombie apocalypse gets out of hand. One part of the book will have a Grimdark tone to it which is pretty much your heroes determined to go down fighting or save their small sector of civilization. The second part of the book will be recovering from one of the aforementioned apocalypses; it's all Points of Darkness now and civilization is being to recover and make contact with pockets of survivors.

Awakening the Earth: So, everyone loves the Underdark. It's so goddamn popular that they made at least three D&D games which more-or-less featured the Underdark. But Underdark is a Forgotten Realms-ish concept. Whatever, we just won't refer to it. We WILL have a book that's all about the kinds of heinous shit that you can see underground like dorf fortresses and drow S&M pits and worse.

Heavenscape: People just LOVE ruins and temples that are decked out with golden fountains and ivory pillars and cherubic statues that piss out eggnog that never goes back. So we should have these. But how do you justify these things in a world where Steve the Crap-Covered Farmer gets called a ponce by his peers for bathing and changing his clothes too often? Simple, you put them in unreachable spots most people can't get to. Most of these things will be taking place on the heavenly planes (hey, blatant tie-in to Manual of the Planes), but there's no reason why you can't have these things in Dreamland, the Astral Plane, or even the frickin' CLOUDS.

Nightmare Necropolis: I know you want a book all about zombies and ghouls and ghosts and shit. Undead rock my billy socks and they're also really easy to write about, too. So they have the distinction of getting a A-tier book all to themselves when no other race does. Suck on that, dragons. Hey, remember earlier when I talked about not having an American West desert for the Silent Desert? Copypaste it here. You can have shit like skeleton coyotes and zombified purple worms and Indian Graveyards (retrofitted as not to offend fantasy sensibilities of course) and all that shit. Righteous.

Adventurer's Guild Log: Okay, have you been paying attention to your product for the past 5-6 years? You fucking better have, otherwise you need a new job. But regardless, THIS book compiles all of the most popular adventures and modules undertaken over the lifespan of this edition into a 'Greatest Hits'. This means that the most popular/contest-winning adventures at conventions goes in here. This means that this book will have a fucking Tomb of Horrors and a Red Hand of Doom adventure in it (one will focus on massively unfair Trial and Error Gameplay, the other on min-maxxing and rules mastery).

Okay, got all that? That's 22 grade-A books. If you throw in a second Player's Handbook, a second Dungeon Master's Guide, and a second and third Monster Manual you could have 26 books. If you release a grade 'A' book every 3-4 months you could seriously have enough primo-material to last for seven years.

I also mentioned earlier in the thread that campaign setting books for popular settings (like Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun) should be skimmed off of the top and then kicked down to grindhouses once you released their 'big' book. I maintain this position.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat May 01, 2010 5:15 am

Speaking of which, does anyone have an idea of how much money there is to be made from hiring a professional translator to translate D&D into other languages?

I can't help but wonder how much potential money is lost from the fact that most games don't have, say, German or Japanese-language translations. Or saved, rather; I don't know how much we can predict that an RPG, even if popular in the United States, could be popular outside of this country.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 01, 2010 5:57 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Speaking of which, does anyone have an idea of how much money there is to be made from hiring a professional translator to translate D&D into other languages?

I can't help but wonder how much potential money is lost from the fact that most games don't have, say, German or Japanese-language translations. Or saved, rather; I don't know how much we can predict that an RPG, even if popular in the United States, could be popular outside of this country.

Shadowrun has had companies translate and release their material in several different languages. That worked on a royalty model. The folks at Pegasus would get the printing proofs for a Shadowrun book, and then they would be able to translate and release them at their own speed in Germany and throw a royalty check up the chain to Catalyst (who in turn was supposed to cut a check for half that much to Topps, but didn't).

It's a reasonable, assured, and pretty small revenue stream. WotC is't super concerned about small revenue streams - look at how they cut the pdf sales completely for being bullshit small. Probably, they should be doing something more like the translation of Magic Cards into other languages.

-Username17