Is WotC's layoff policy creating a D&D death spiral?

[Maj]

Depends on the computer game. Those 3D cRPGs like NWN and Fallout have a limited shelf-life of about 5-6 years. Stuff like Tetris, Super Mario World, Bejeweled, Starcraft, and WoW have about an unlimited shelf life.

Good point. I didn't realize that WoW was released that long ago (2004). I thought it was more recent.

If WotC decided to stick with 3rd Edition the sales of that product would probably be about as lackluster as it is right now as problems pile up and the clunkiness of playing a tabletop RPG becomes more intolerable to the public at large.

See, to me that's sort of like saying that if you don't update your product, it will go out of style. Which is a no brainer. The thing is - D&D is one of those games that will go on forever provided that it adapts to its players, but WotC has really blown it in terms of updating its product.

3.0 got off to a great start - the designers recognized what new people wanted. They recognized the value of the community and created the OGL. They had the right idea - they positioned their game so that it could have kept up.

To me, it seems like the problems with 3.0 began when a whole bunch of rules were made, but not fixed. There were adjudications that piled bandaids on top of broken bones because "I screwed that up" wasn't in the vocabulary of the peeps at WotC/designers. And so they fired a bunch of people, "fixed" the problems, called it 3.5, completely divided the community base, and continued on their merry way.

3.5 (the name even implies computer geekness) really comes off as the façade to cover for the behind-the-scenes development of the new WotC/4E rehaul... Which was masterminded by people too far inside to see what people outside wanted. It's the absent-minded "eh" tossed to the players to pacify them.

And then there's 4E. Which seems to me to have been made by taking a digital medium and spreading it out over pages and pages of pressed wood pulp. It would be like me responding to these threads by taking out a sheet of paper, writing out a response, scanning it in, translating with OCR, and attaching it to a reply window. Yeah, it works, but oh, the agony.

The other caveat is that while those above long-runners have lasted for a long time and people will still probably be playing all of them into the next decade (unless someone releases an awesome New Super Mario Bros. [Wii] hack), they're pretty much static games.

I guess I'm thinking that when/if something better than WoW comes along, the popularity of 4E is going to wane even more. By trying to translate a computer game into table top, they've not only narrowed their market to D&D players who like WoW (rather than expanding their market to WoW players), but they've tied the shelf life of the edition to something they don't have control over. Which is Stupid's stupid.

It's hardly such a serious layout of money. I've frankly seen people set up similar repositories as a hobby, and are maintained out of community devotion. Giving a devoted community the tools to enhance the community and quality of the hobby should be a no-brainer.

The problem is that WotC is in conservation mode. When life sucks, people (and living organisms) go into conservation mode to try to preserve whatever they have until things look better. The problem is that when you're in conservation mode, you tend to miss opportunities that might get you out (like investing in a more expensive game developer for your product, or giving away your product for free to a community of supporters) because you don't want to accept the loss for the risk.

The problem is that unless there's a mystic revival of D&D - computers all over the world spontaneously combust causing Cheetos to fall from the sky and Mountain Dew to rain down upon us - there is nowhere to go but down. And when they get far enough down, someone who is willing to risk it will come along, pick up the pieces, and lay it out on the line. If WotC doesn't revise its thinking, they won't be thinking at all.

[Zinegata]

I'm honestly tempted to believe that it isn't WoW that took away the tabletop RPG market. It's CCGs and boardgames.

Meaning the whole "Let's grab the WoW market for our new generation of RPGers" strategy was entirely wrong.

[Neurosis]

I've yet to see anyone on the Den call anyone in the mainstream RPG industry a "good designer".

[Blasted]

I don't think it's ever been discussed. Create a topic if you like.

[Zinegata]

I'm pretty sure there's been a thread on that before. And it ended with everyone nitpicking how said "good" designers were actually bad - i.e. the 3.0 crew screwed over fighters and DMFs.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm honestly tempted to believe that it isn't WoW that took away the tabletop RPG market.

I don't think that it's WoW specifically so much as the chickens coming home to roost on the TTRPG playability thing.

Tabletop RPGs are very difficult to get started. They take about as much of a time investment out of your day as fishing, they require as much organization as a birthday party for a teenager, and they require as much preparation as doing taxes.

Now the 4E character builder and just the design has gone a long way in shaving off time required to play. Seriously, that's one thing that 4E absolutely and got totally right, almost enough to redeem the game. I can get someone who has played an RPG before able to play after 30 minutes of explaining things and I don't have to cause combat to grind to a halt to explain most things as long as they put some time into the character builder.

However, 4E didn't go far enough in making the game available to play. They really, really in my opinion should not have cancelled that online tabletop thing they promised in the fucking monster manual. I can sort of understand why they did though, because in 2008 social networking technology just quite isn't up to the standards of playing the game.

I know I tease 4E constantly about being the next WoW, but seriously, one of the major reasons why that game is so big that it's easy to pick up and play. Seriously, my dad could play WoW if he wanted to and he thinks that Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark moves at too fast of a pace.

For 5E, making D&D able to be played on a social networking application, even if it's one they have to make their fucking selves (which they absolutely should, I don't know anyone lining up to do this) is ground zero for the long-term sales of the product. 5E might be able to get back up to 6 million players if they release a really good edition, but in the long run they're going to bleed players if they don't update the interface.

[Lago PARANOIA]

tl;dr version: WoW is just a convenient lightning rod for the blame of D&D's long-term decline (and I do believe it is on its current track). However, even if MMORPGs disappeared off of the face of the earth it probably would only get D&D a few hundred thousand more people. The real problem is D&D's demand for time and delayed gratification and 5E will have to take significant steps to remedy this if it doesn't want to go the way of slot cars.

[Zinegata]

Lago, I think you missed my point.

Stuff like the character builder, "easier setup", and social networking are all stuff that are intended to appeal to the WoW crowd. The problem is, the WoW crowd is simply not attracted to the tabletop gaming experience. At all.

They like their computers. With shiny graphics. With math automatically done for them. There is essentially little or no way they can be convinced to play tabletop RPGs, unless they're an "omni" gamer who plays all kinds of games.

In short, no matter how easy you make a tabletop game, the vast majority of WoW players would never play said tabletop games.

People who are inclined to play tabletop RPGs are either Magic Tea Party people, or people who like the slow pace and "do your own math" inherent in a tabletop gaming experience. The former (which I argue is the smaller market) is a big reason why unbalanced shit like Paizo still sells. While the latter group has steadily migrated to playing CCGs and boardgames, as said games *are* designed to be balanced and they don't have to deal with stupid drama queens.

[TheFlatline]

For 5E, making D&D able to be played on a social networking application, even if it's one they have to make their fucking selves (which they absolutely should, I don't know anyone lining up to do this) is ground zero for the long-term sales of the product. 5E might be able to get back up to 6 million players if they release a really good edition, but in the long run they're going to bleed players if they don't update the interface.

I'm actually moderately surprised they haven't licensed out D&D to a facebook app maker. I could totally see a "casual" D&D application where you and your buddies on your friends list dungeon delve for 15 minutes, do the entire dungeon, and then you get loot, level up if necessary, and you're done. Hell, it doesn't even have to be multiplayer. You just pull in the PCs from your friends as NPCs/whatever and they gain experience or loot or whatever from it.

It'd be a travesty to the "purity" of the game, but it'd probably make more money than tabletop ever could.

[TheFlatline]

Lago, I think you missed my point.

Stuff like the character builder, "easier setup", and social networking are all stuff that appeal to the WoW crowd. The problem is, the WoW crowd is simply not attracted to the tabletop gaming experience. They like their computers. With shiny graphics. With math automatically done for them. There is essentially little or no way they can be convinced to play tabletop RPGs, unless they're an "omni" gamer who plays all kinds of games.

In short, no matter how easy you make a tabletop game, the vast majority of WoW players would never play said tabletop games.

People who are inclined to play tabletop RPGs are either Magic Tea Party people, or people who like the slow pace and "do your own math" inherent in a tabletop gaming experience. The former (which I argue is the smaller market) is a big reason why unbalanced shit like Paizo still sells. While the latter group has steadily migrated to playing CCGs and boardgames, as said games *are* designed to be balanced and they don't have to deal with stupid drama queens.

I suspect you have a real point here. I'm a lifelong tabletop gamer, and lately (the last year or so) I've drifted to board games in a big way. Descent, for all it's fiddly suckitude, has made the traditional dungeon crawl almost completely extinct in my gaming group. Battlestar Galactica and it's traitor ilk have really gone far in replacing the backstabbing party intrigue games (White Wolf, I'm looking at you), and I find myself drawn more to niche RPGs when I do go tabletop (Traveller, Paranoia, GrimDark, etc etc). In fact, aside from specific storylines that players have gotten attached do, we never say "I want to game", we always say "let's do a game night" and the board & card games come out (we stay away from CCGs though. They've become a "whoever has the most money wins" sort of prospect for us).

[Zinegata]

I'm actually moderately surprised they haven't licensed out D&D to a facebook app maker. I could totally see a "casual" D&D application where you and your buddies on your friends list dungeon delve for 15 minutes, do the entire dungeon, and then you get loot, level up if necessary, and you're done. Hell, it doesn't even have to be multiplayer. You just pull in the PCs from your friends as NPCs/whatever and they gain experience or loot or whatever from it.

It'd be a travesty to the "purity" of the game, but it'd probably make more money than tabletop ever could.

Facebook probably doesn't want to talk to WoTC for a while (and vice versa) because of that whole Gleemax fiasco.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Stuff like the character builder, "easier setup", and social networking are all stuff that are intended to appeal to the WoW crowd. The problem is, the WoW crowd is simply not attracted to the tabletop gaming experience. At all.

or people who like the slow pace and "do your own math" inherent in a tabletop gaming experience.

I think you confused 'plus' and 'part of the tabletop experience' for 'something we put up with'.

That's one thing I don't understand about long-timers and what's really going to kill the hobby; they think that the inconveniences of D&D is supposed to be a feature and if people don't like it, then fuck them. Yeah, there will always be some inconveniences inherent to D&D--being the DM is simply always going to be more work than being the player. But seriously, there's no reason to have that shit in the game more than necessary other than as a resistance to change.

People love Magic Tea Party. Seriously, there's a reason why there are so many fucking RP guilds even though it's completely unsuited for it in MMORPGs. Fanfiction.net is bigger than ever. I am willing to put up with a lot of shit to get my Magic Tea Party on, but it's not like I enjoy it. I seriously don't like spending weeks searching for a group. I don't like spending 2 hours selecting appropriate monsters and drawing up an appropriate battlemat ahead of time. I don't like flipping back and forth in books to see what something does. I don't like doing two-hour sitdowns with potential new players explaining the rules to them. I don't like having to assign a special 'D&D time' because I don't always feel like playing on Sunday afternoon but that's the only time everyone can get a chunk of 4-5 hours to play. So it's either play when I sometimes have a headache or need to study or don't play at all this week. That shit is annoying and if D&D got rid of it I would be glad for it.

That 'easier setup' and social networking and other stuff isn't designed to appeal to WoWers, it's designed to appeal to people who don't want to put up with all of the bullshit required to get a game going. The reason why people like WoW and board games and CCGs probably has a lot to do with differing tastes, but I also bet that the fact that you can get a satisfying session organized, started, and finished in a reasonable amount of time and effort has something to do with it.

[For Valor]

What happened with Gleemax...?

[Zinegata]

For Valor->

Died a horrible death.

Lago->

Lago, again, you're horribly misunderstanding how people actually play tabletop games.

Tabletop games must always include some level of complexity and "do your own math". The moment it doesn't, it gets derided by the core tabletop gaming market as a "kid's game" not worthy of their attention.

Until very recently, the worst-selling Magic sets are Core sets. Why? Because Core Sets used to consist entirely of basic cards. They were meant to attract new gamers, but in reality new gamers found the game too simple and bland - so they jumped into the "advanced" sets almost immediately. Only recently have they made Core Sets more complex and interesting, and they've begun to sell very well as a result.

Likewise, you're never gonna get a Settlers of Catan player to play Monopoly regularly. At best, they'd play Monopoly on a whim. Because what Catan and other boardgames offer is a cerebral exercise - as opposed to rolling dice and hoping you get Boardwalk.

Fuck, when I taught Heroscape to five year old kids, they hated the basic game even when I let them play with the biggest and prettiest figures. So I instead made them play the advanced game with "regular" troop units, and they loved it. They even understood the concept of height advantage.

A character builder won't impress the tabletop crowd, because it's not a cerebral experience. It's an exercise in fucking palette-swapping and cherry-picking stuff from a list.

Making it "easier to setup" is a valid concern, but we've always known the answer to this: Pre-made modules and adventures. In which case you may as well play a boardgame - because again the whole point of an RPG (for tabletops DMs) is to be able to make DIY encounters.

Social networking won't help much either. Because honestly, social networking sites for various hobbies already exist, and having WoTC make another one just results in another Gleemax. CCGers and boardgamers have likewise been using social networking sites, but most of the time you're gonna be playing with an existing gaming group, and not a group of strangers you meet over facebook.

Bluntly, you're throwing out a lot of ideas, but you don't seem to ever bother to relate this to how people actually play.

[Maj]

Stuff like the character builder, "easier setup", and social networking are all stuff that are intended to appeal to the WoW crowd. The problem is, the WoW crowd is simply not attracted to the tabletop gaming experience. At all.

They like their computers. With shiny graphics. With math automatically done for them. There is essentially little or no way they can be convinced to play tabletop RPGs, unless they're an "omni" gamer who plays all kinds of games.

That's exactly what I mean when I said that by tying the game to WoW, WotC's target audience became D&D players who also play WoW, rather than D&D players, and certainly not all WoW players like I think they intended.

In fact, aside from specific storylines that players have gotten attached do, we never say "I want to game", we always say "let's do a game night" and the board & card games come out

Agreed.

That 'easier setup' and social networking and other stuff isn't designed to appeal to WoWers, it's designed to appeal to people who don't want to put up with all of the bullshit required to get a game going.

What's the primary age demographic of D&D players? Is it the same as it was back in the day?

What happened with Gleemax...?

WotC shut it down claiming {OK, green} that they needed to focus on their games until they were awesome, at which point they would revisit the community idea.

[erik]

Lulz at that gleemax shutdown link. Since gleemax was shut down until their products could get to a level "where they were proud of them" it sure seems like an ongoing admission that they have never been proud of 4e.

Not terribly surprising other than the public admission itself.

[TheFlatline]

There is certainly a grognard joy to manipulating dice, numbers, and figs on a battle mat that computer games don't capture. Whether that joy is a generational thing that is going away or not we'll have to see, but Lago has a point about taking time to get things started.

The number 1 impediment these days to me playing RPGs is that I have to now hold everyone's hand if I want to play a tabletop game. I pull out a new game, everyone may really want to play it, but *nobody* will read the book. If I'm lucky, one person other than the resident rules lawyer will take the time to read it. Everyone else just says "guide me through it as we go" and I roll my eyes and break out Lunch Money instead.

Money is part of the issue, but when I purchase copies of the book and loan them out they get tossed aside and never even thumbed through. They just assume that the guy who wants to play the game will teach 500 pages of rules to 7 people in a reasonable amount of time. I don't expect people to memorize the rules, but everyone's been there, where you have to explain the setting, the rules, the crunchy bits, and constantly (as in every. fucking. turn) remind someone what dice to roll to do certain things.

To contrast, I *was* able to teach board game rules for something like, say, Battlestar Galactica, in about 30 minutes. 15 minutes after the game started everyone was comfortable and we had 5 hours of pure gameplay, not 3 hours of character rolling interspersed with 2 hours of mindless banter, followed by 45 minutes of gaming.

One thing I would *love* to see is a series of D&D/whatever books called "The lazy bastard's guide to playing a wizard/fighter/thief/whatever". It's a booklet, with the rules distilled down to their utmost pure essence. Combat. How to memorize spells (no spells in the book, they have to look that up, but you do get a list of spell names and what page they're on). How to roll a skill check. A list of fucking skills. All the charts you need to play a relevant character. Make it reliant on owning the PHB 3.14159 or whatever the fuck you need to do, but just give me something to shove down a player's throat so he or she doesn't have an excuse for not knowing or retaining the knowledge to a single rule of the game we're trying to play.

Sorry, Lago hit upon a very touchy point with me. As the usual DM of the game, I have 2-3 times the work that any single player has to do, and having to spoonfeed the rules on top of that makes it totally not fun.

[Zinegata]

That's exactly what I mean when I said that by tying the game to WoW, WotC's target audience became D&D players who also play WoW, rather than D&D players, and certainly not all WoW players like I think they intended.

I think their thinking was more along the lines of "There is a huge number of WoW players! And they're already paying so much money per month! If we can only tap a significant percentage of this river of wealth, we'll make D&D 4E as huge success!"

To be fair, lots of business people think like that. The problem is, they didn't subject this idea to a comprehensive analysis - particularly one based on the needs and wants of the consumer.

In terms of theme - sure, D&D and WoW are both fantasy titles. But how you play D&D is totally different from how you play WoW.

WoW lets you play at home without having to go to your friend's house. WoW automates all of the math, so all you really need to do is to point and click. WoW keeps you entertained simply by showing you shiny pictures.

Moreover, the primary skill you need in WoW is an excellent sense of timing, in realtime. Knowing when to heal, when to buff/debuff, and when to cast a taunt so you get just enough aggro to take the heat off a DPSer.

In D&D, it's totally different. Oftentimes, resolving a situation involves thinking of a creative solution. Like using a feat everybody laughs at, but ended up being critical against a particular foe. In fact, timing plays very little part in D&D - because of the abstracted nature of time out-of-combat, and the turn-based nature within-combat.

What's the primary age demographic of D&D players? Is it the same as it was back in the day?

I'm tempted to say the primary age demographic of D&D nowadays is "older".

[Zinegata]

Flatline->

There was a "D&D for Dummies" book published a while ago. It sold... poorly.

Personally, again, I think "make it easier to setup" is a valid concern, but we already have a solution for this - which is pregenerated modules and adventures. Go any further and the line between boardgames and RPG will start to vanish, particularly when you look at how boardgames improve speed of setup.

[K]

I've yet to see anyone on the Den call anyone in the mainstream RPG industry a "good designer".

I think Monte Cook is very creative. His only problem is that he needs a good editor to tone down his crazier ideas.

I think his Arcana Unearthed was in many ways an improvement on the system. If his setting didn't suck too hard, and if his improvements had been actual rewrites of the kitchen sink fantasy that is DnD and not his setting-specific stuff, I think he could have made a real go at his attempt to do 3e his own way. He basically got pwned by the Earthdawn Effect.

[A Man In Black]

Facebook probably doesn't want to talk to WoTC for a while (and vice versa) because of that whole Gleemax fiasco.

You don't have to be on speaking terms with Facebook to make a Facebook app any more than you need to be on speaking terms with Microsoft to make a Windows app.

[Zinegata]

K->

Nonetheless, with the Den there is always a "but XYZ" when it comes to good designer talk.

MiB->

Note: "and vice versa".

[Fuchs]

Money is part of the issue, but when I purchase copies of the book and loan them out they get tossed aside and never even thumbed through. They just assume that the guy who wants to play the game will teach 500 pages of rules to 7 people in a reasonable amount of time. I don't expect people to memorize the rules, but everyone's been there, where you have to explain the setting, the rules, the crunchy bits, and constantly (as in every. fucking. turn) remind someone what dice to roll to do certain things.

That's why I use D&D 3E for Fantasy games, and SR4 for SciFi/Modern games. If I wanted to play say BSG I'd not use the BSG RPG (if there is one) but adapt SR4. If I wanted to play Conan - 3E.

Even if the rules are not perfect having them known already by my group beats trying to teach them a new system.

[mean_liar]

I'm with Lago. 4e's failures in play have been beaten to death, but there are a few things it got very, very right, namely minimizing prep time.

The Character Builder allows a player to create a full character and get a PDF of their character with all their powers right in front of them. Sure, they need to be conversant with a lot of cards, but at the least it's all there for them instead of spread out over several books.

However, this isn't just the Character Builder, either. DM prep time for me in 4e was a snap. Write up a storyline that fits the metaplot, then populate 8-12 encounters based on a per-encounter XP allotment. Each encounter is a small set piece battle of some kind... and done. 3e adventure design is a massive pain in the ass, since monsters tend to be one-trick ponies (oooh look another +bajillion grapple monster) or spellcasters or NPCs (...and now I spend thirty minutes per NPC of note in order for the PCs to kill them in roughly the same time).

I'd like to see more tools. For example, my 4e prep time was minimal because I had d/loaded a spreadsheet with every monster ever published on it, with their categorizations and XP value right there. Using it was a snap, but it was still fan-created. Ideally that should have been an integral experience.

Making rules such that players can play easier online via PbP is something else that I'd like to see.

...and now I'm rambling so I'll just stop.

[RobbyPants]

I think his Arcana Unearthed was in many ways an improvement on the system. If his setting didn't suck too hard, and if his improvements had been actual rewrites of the kitchen sink fantasy that is DnD and not his setting-specific stuff, I think he could have made a real go at his attempt to do 3e his own way. He basically got pwned by the Earthdawn Effect.

That's the first time I've heard that term. What's the Earthdawn Effect?