Well, Mike Mearls got promoted. Any hope for 5e?

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:43 am

Actually, those end/start of turn effects were always alot more powerful, at least if you had a GM that realized using "Aid Another" to grant another saving throw to a solo was usually a better deal for a supporting monster than making some attack (especially when the DC was 10, though I believe they fixed that at some point).

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:32 am

I am in no way competent enough to discuss rules issues, but as things are I AM a marketing man and tell you:

There is absoluely no chance any marketing person in hi or her right mind would call D&D 5E "AD&D 3rd".

Yes, D&D and AD&D have co-existed for some time. And yes, there are devotees of D&D who know why this was, who understand the background and "genesis" of that marketing nightmare and who can give very good reasons why AD&D should be re-introduced via the Coke/New Coke/Classic Coke argument.

However.

To all those who are not certified RPG geeks, a "D&D 4E" will always be more advanced than a "AD&D 3", because D&D has the higher number attached to it.

Futhermore, the "Advanced" in AD&D tells people that this is a game for experts only – a game for people who have played D&D 4E for some time now and who want more options, powers, additional rules etc. – and who in his right mind would want even MORE of that?

The only thing a "AD&D 3" would to is to misguide n00bs to D&D 4E.
AD&D 3 would only appeal to those who knew all ther backgrounds, all the editions, all the backstories and all the reasoning behind the naming conventions of the D&D brand since its conception.

Yes, ultimately, it would appeal to Frank. Period.

If I was the guy having to come up with a name for D&D 5E – AND if 5E wasn't just a modification (aka "improvement") of 4E – I would call it any of the following

– D&D Origins Edition (if it would be "back to the roots")

– D&D Gold Edition (if it would indeed be a fresh, new start)

– D&D Chainmail Edition (if it would expand on boardgame principles even more)

– D&D [insert name of campaign world here] Edition (if there was a campaign world detailed in the sourcebook and the rules would support that world an gaming experience)

– D&D Gametable Edition (if it would be released as an app only)

quanta · Post by **quanta** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:46 am

Solos got 'fixed' in the Monster Manual 3 by basically allowing them to take a piss on all established rules and giving them extra rounds during a turn inc. more saving throws for no reason. But it's an extremely asymmetric fix; effects that last until the start or end of the player's next turn are now a lot more powerful than effects that last until a monster's saving throw? WTF?

Yeah and to make it worse... IME, til end-of-turn powers are still more than enough to lead to the complete and utter hosing of solos. I tossed 4 optimized lvl. 30 characters vs. Lolth, Demogorgon, and some-other-solo-I-can't remember.

It was fucking slaughter. Some of the hardest solos available at the time did a total of 30 damage to the PCs. In 3 rounds. The PCs turned the solos into chunky salsa easily. Could've even just not used any dailies if they didn't want to. Then it might've taken... oh... 4 rounds.

The solos basically didn't get to do squat. The wizard just hosed them each turn, the uber-lockdown pally was completely untouchable and his punishment was fucking stratosphericly nasty (it basically made attacking any other PC pointless), and the warlord and ranger|barb paired up to launch horrible multiattacks of doom that blended ~one solo per round. Well, the real clincher was the warlord putting everyone's attack bonus up to "hits on a 2" and pumping everyone's init.

sake · Post by **sake** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 8:59 am

I've noticed on the warlock update, one of the 'lock's dailies went from Save Ends to a set number of rounds the effect could be active for. Which, while it's yet more fiddly crap to track, it is a better solution to the controllers taking monsters out forever problem then "Solo's all but insta-save automaticly" and "Let's nerf all the save penalty stuff to only work on the first save".

'Course they've also decided that zone effects should only go off at the end of a monster's turn, rendering zones impotent wastes of space unless your DM runs mobs as braindead animals. So even three years later, they still don't have a clue how to design controllers.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:34 am

RA wrote:To all those who are not certified RPG geeks, a "D&D 4E" will always be more advanced than a "AD&D 3", because D&D has the higher number attached to it.

MORE PEOPLE PLAY 3E THAN 4E, Your Argument is Invalid.

More people play a third party knockoff of 3e than play 4e. The public has spoken, they don't want a bigger number, they want the version they already have to be advanced.

-Username17

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:40 am

You are thinking strictly inside D&D. Marketing guys think beyond current customers (players). AD&D x would be aiming in the wrong direction: An AD&D would by its very nature target old AD&D enthusiasts – aka "people who love their original AD&D and are condtantly griping about anything else", aka "I am happy with the books I bought and will not buy anything new, nor will I ever make the effort to understand any new rules system".

My point is totally valid:

D&D is BETTER KNOWN than AD&D.
Better known = better basis to build brand worth on,
i.e. "Coca-Cola" best known word in the Western world (no. 1 is "okay") and CC most valuable brand in the world.

I see your point, Frank, I really do.
But marketing and buyer decision doesn't work that way.

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:52 am

raben-aas wrote: I see your point, Frank, I really do.
But marketing and buyer decision doesn't work that way.

Careful, don't ruin FT's world.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:00 am

raben-aas wrote:You are thinking strictly inside D&D. Marketing guys think beyond current customers (players). AD&D x would be aiming in the wrong direction: An AD&D would by its very nature target old AD&D enthusiasts – aka "people who love their original AD&D and are condtantly griping about anything else", aka "I am happy with the books I bought and will not buy anything new, nor will I ever make the effort to understand any new rules system".

My point is totally valid:

D&D is BETTER KNOWN than AD&D.
Better known = better basis to build brand worth on,
i.e. "Coca-Cola" best known word in the Western world (no. 1 is "okay") and CC most valuable brand in the world.

I see your point, Frank, I really do.
But marketing and buyer decision doesn't work that way.

You're saying that in the name of marketing, WotC would or should go for a strategy that has proven to have failed instead of a strategy that has proven to have succeeded. That doesn't make any sense on any level.

Back when they had D&D and AD&D, AD&D outsold D&D. Now they only have D&D. Why wouldn't they bring out AD&D if they wanted to outsell it and knew that they could?

You can't just say "Marketing Knows Best!", you have to contextualize your product. Putting a big sounding word on your product may not make it sell any more if your product is a small car. D&D is in a death spiral, with both of the last products being named "newest" and "even newer" in available market speak. Slapping a new product out called "newest of all" is just throwing more death down the spiral. You have to reposition the brand before you can get any traction from announcing that you have something new for it.

After "New Coke" they had to go to "Coke Classic". If they had gone to "Newer Coke" it would have been a disaster.

-Username17

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:13 am

Coke has a saturated market. RPGs are a (potentially) growth market.
Coke competes with Pepsi for control of the market. DnD defines the market, and grows or shrinks it.

Putting the number 3 on your product is contextualizing it, far more than the alphabet soup afterwards. It contextualizes it in a way that gives away 99.5 percent of your potential market, to cater to the most embittered portion of the remaining 0.5%. That ain't good.

(Also, a counterexample: Windows ME was not followed by a return to a previous platform; it was followed by XP. That seemed to go okay.)

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:27 am

Note that not a single one of my name suggestions has any "newer" (=5E) in it.

And I am not saying that "markezing knows best". I am just saying that the audience you are targeting when going "AD&D" is the audience that in all likelihood won't switch to any different product than their beloved AD&D 2 anyway.

Thus, if you (as WotC) want to reimagine D&D, it doesn't make any sense to call it D&D 5E (because that would suggest you are only updating 4E) AND it doesn't make any sense to call it AD&D, too (because most RPG players are totally unaware of the AD&D brand as a wholly different product that existed side by side with D&D, and because "Advanced" translates into "more complicated").

Putting a "3" behind AD&D doesn't fix that problem, because 3 is less than 4 and also close to no one outside the "AD&D crowd" knows the edition number of AD&D anyway.

Therefore:
– you have to stick to "D&D", because that is the best-known brand name
– you shouldn't call it 5E unless it really is built on 4E
– you should, if "5E" is really really new, by all means give it an additional name/title that sparks an idea or gives an indication of "reboot" or "new game", i.e. D&D Origins (suggests "back to the roots"), D&D Gold (suggest "best"), D&D Unlimited (suggests "developed for all platforms and game styles, in print an on reader and as app) or D&D Adventure (suggests easy-to-play and -2reduced to the max").

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:43 am

raben-aas wrote:Thus, if you (as WotC) want to reimagine D&D, it doesn't make any sense to call it D&D 5E (because that would suggest you are only updating 4E)

That's silly. For one, it's D&D and it's a new edition. It doesn't matter if you slap FIFTH EDITION in huge letters on the front or put "20XX edition" in tiny sans serif text on the publication info page or call it Super Dungeons and Dragons Turbo Arcade Edition, people are going to call your game D&D 5E.

For another, a bunch of people like 4e and they are part of your target audience. You want to tell them "This is the new and improved thing replacing the old thing you like."

And lastly, pretty much everyone understands that a new edition can be a clean break. Everyone understood that 3E was a clean break, and that 4E was a clean break. Subtitles do not imply "clean break". They imply "licensed crap" or "additional rules" or "spinoff". If you don't call your game Dungeons and Dragons full stop, then people are going to say that your game isn't really Dungeons and Dragons.

If your goal is to supplant the old product that used to be called Dungeons and Dragons, then name your game Dungeons and Dragons.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:46 am

Just because someone dislikes a new thing doesn't mean that they're satisfied with the old thing. It could just mean that the new thing is that much shittier.

No one except for grognards (whom you're not going to get onboard anyway) thought that 3rd Edition D&D didn't need a change. In fact a lot of people of that edition don't exactly think too highly of 2nd Edition. I mean, seriously, for AD&D3E to not turn off someone all of these things must be true:

1) They must not hold a negative opinion of 1st/2nd Edition. I can tell you right now that as for me any edition calling itself AD&D has an uphill battle to prove itself to me because that title signifies to me a history-wank grognard who is more interested in indulging in nostalgia than putting out a decent game.
2) They must not hold a negative opinion of post-2E D&D. By now, anyone still holding onto pre-3rd Edition is pretty much a lost cause,
3) They're not put off by the snubbing of the edition--yes, 4E fans are smaller than that of the previous edition but they're still seriously about 1 million people. Telling them that their edition sucked so much that you're going to side with Pathfinder people is not a good way to start.
4) People who were dissatisfied with all of the editions for one reason or another won't feel as if it's more of the same. It doesn't just have to be lousy rules, it could just be something as simple as 'I couldn't find people to play a previous game so I feel that I wasted my money'. Probably the only way to rope these people in is with a totally new direction.
5) That even if they liked an edition they're amenable to the product line continuing rather than it just lying fallow and to be enjoyed in its as-is state. See: The previous shows of Star Trek. I like DS9 and TOS--I'd feel very ambivalent about DS9 being revived and totally against TOS being revived. Just because I think that VOY and ENT are bad shows doesn't mean that I would appreciate them trying to revive old lines even if they were really successful. As amazing as it sounds, just because someone likes the franchise and really likes a particular entry in the franchise doesn't exactly mean that they want that entry to come back. There's a reason why the Mario games don't revamp popular old levels (let alone popular games) except as a very quick nod even though people to this day will say that SMW was a masterpiece and SMB3 made angels sing in joy.

If your point is that if something sucked it's best to go back to basics, why not just go turn the clock back one edition instead of two? At the VERY least you'll avoid turning off people in column A. Calling the edition AD&D assumes that a 3rd Edition fan (which are probably the majority these days) will be okay with taking a backseat to 2E, which ain't necessarily so. If you had a product line back in 3E's heyday that called itself AD&D you might be on to something, but that ship has sailed; AD&D doesn't mean anything to most people who played after 2000 except as an extinct and obsolete grognard edition--and seriously, it'll be like 12-13 years since AD&D was even a thing and you'll be hard pressed convincing people that D&D is 'cool' to the younger crowd. It'd be like naming your new console the Nintendo 128 or Sega Pluto.

I'm still in favor of calling the edition Super Dungeons and Dragons, because it avoids taking sides and avoids embarrassing sequel titles.

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 12:27 pm

A Man In Black wrote:It doesn't matter if you slap FIFTH EDITION in huge letters on the front

The whole world of advertisment seems to disagree with that statement.

Pray tell me, which number does the latest version Windows have, then?

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 12:42 pm

raben-aas wrote:The whole world of advertisment seems to disagree with that statement.

Pray tell me, which number does the latest version Windows have, then?

No clue. It doesn't address the rest of the post, though.

In general, reusing the name communicates to already-extant RPG players that you're making a clean break, while Hyper Super [game] Turbo implies an extension or spinoff. The last two editions of D&D were not simple updates to the previous edition. The last new edition that was a simple update to the previous came out while Reagan was president. Why would "Dungeons and Dragons - 5th edition" imply that it was an update to 4th edition?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 12:46 pm

raben-aas wrote:
A Man In Black wrote:It doesn't matter if you slap FIFTH EDITION in huge letters on the front
The whole world of advertisment seems to disagree with that statement.

Pray tell me, which number does the latest version Windows have, then?

What about the one before that?

Microsoft has the best marketing team that has ever existed. And they are of the opinion that simply iterating the numbers every time causes fatigue. Consider:

Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7

OK? The people who are the best in the entire world at selling people new editions of things do not think that you should put a number on every edition or that you should always move numbers up when you do.

After the failure of both D&D4 and D&D Essentials, you would have to be a marketing moron to decide that your next edition of D&D should be in the format "D&D (bigger number)" or "D&D (Nonsequitur)". Both of those strategies did not work in the current market.

-Username17

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 12:50 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:After the failure of both D&D4 and D&D Essentials, you would have to be a marketing moron to decide that your next edition of D&D should be in the format "D&D (bigger number)" or "D&D (Nonsequitur)". Both of those strategies did not work in the current market.

If you're going to come out with your game for Christmas 2012, then okay.

Otherwise, why not just call it Dungeons and Dragons?

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:02 pm

Both of those strategies did not work in the current market.

And calling the next edition "Windows Vista 2" would work? Methinks not, and your assassement of the marketing genius of the Windows guys is supporting that very much.

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:10 pm

to be honest, "AD&D3" would just feel like a cheap, dishonest, and condescending marketing ploy to me (as a consumer).
If you're redoing your shit, then be upfront and honest about it.
As a consumer, I have to say that raben-aas has a solid position (though, we could probably quibble with the exact nomenclature).

Frank does have a point that the name does indeed need to indicate what direction the game went; but don't be condescending about it.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:11 pm

No, but calling it Windows XP 2 might have a shot

(for after windows 7)

People are all nostalgic and shit about windows XP.
Same with AD&D. Though amusingly enough the people who loved 1, were mostly meh on 2, and the people who loved 2, were pretty much 3E ruined my game.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:15 pm

raben-aas wrote:
Both of those strategies did not work in the current market.
And calling the next edition "Windows Vista 2" would work? Methinks not, and your assassement of the marketing genius of the Windows guys is supporting that very much.

For Windows it would probably be a matter of going back to the most popular version, which I think is XP. So having a "Windows XP2" or something would be a possibilty. Remember that Windows XP is the most popular operating system in the world right now (39% of all web browsers as of June 2011), and that if both Vista and 7 had been bombs, putting out a new iteration of XP would be the obvious thing to do.

WotC is in the position of having released Windows XP and followed that up with NT3 and ME. Of course the next issuance is going to be Windows XP Service Pack 2. Duh.

-Username17

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:18 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:WotC is in the position of having released Windows XP and followed that up with NT3 and ME. Of course the next issuance is going to be Windows XP Service Pack 2. Duh.

Nope. It would be Vista. Duh.
(Or, if Vista had already been used, then any other mumbo word)

And you know why? Because Windows XP Service Pack 2 would only cater to the XP users. They MAY be the majority of Windows users, but they do not want the majority -- they want them ALL. And they get them by offering a new version, and maybe a sweet deal/incentive for upgrading your system to the new version. From XP, from NT, from ME, from 3.1, doesn't matter.

AAS

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:42 pm

sabs wrote: Same with AD&D. Though amusingly enough the people who loved 1, were mostly meh on 2, and the people who loved 2, were pretty much 3E ruined my game.

Again, this assumes that people actually want AD&D to come back rather than just leaving it like it is. No one actually wants a repackaged and reimaged version of Interview With The Vampire (movie or novel) even though vampire fiction is the 'it' thing right now. It might actually turn out to be pretty good and get word of mouth fans but that doesn't mean that people want it.

And IWAV is considered a freaking classic. Fans of 3rd and 4th Edition D&D who haven't played AD&D (considering that it last came out well over a decade) have extremely mixed feelings over it. This isn't even like going back to Coke Classic after the flop of New Coke, this is like going back to Coke: Pre-Treated Water edition. Sure, you might get some fans who liked the tingly taste of coca but others are going to hear botulism reports on Dateline and give it a pass.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:53 pm

raben-aas wrote:I see your point, Frank, I really do.
But marketing and buyer decision doesn't work that way.

Works fine for some marketing departments (although generally only in family owned companies). Take say Zippo, or Coca Cola etc etc. They don't stop innovating, but they ignore their old customers at their peril.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 5:42 pm

Pray tell me, which number does the latest version Windows have, then?

As I previously pointed out, a lower number than Win 95, 98 and 2000, so your contention that marketing means you gotta give a product higher numbers to sell is absurd. If you wanna talk the geek market, which did a bigger box office:: Episode IV or Episode I ? (for a followup, which has better reviews and is generally better liked?)

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:44 pm

Just call the next edition "Dungeons & Dragons 2012," use a year-released convention for all future editions and call it a day. No one is offended by playing up edition war 2/3/4 bullshit, it drops stupid comparisons to software platforms, and no one is confused about what's an older or newer product.