[Not 4e] What will we see from 5e?

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:08 pm

As a simple example, how many people on this forum have downloaded the PHB for free, and how many actually play 4e?

I play 4e, and I downloaded the book when it first came out. However - I also went out and bought it. HOWEVER, however, out of my gaming group of 8, there is one person who didn't buy the PHB (or download it, for that matter, she just uses other people's), one person who's bought pretty much every supplement, and one person who's bought a PHB2. There's no other non-PHB books besides that. And most of these people are very heavily into 4e, but also poor college students.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:11 pm

Iron Mongler wrote:If I had to guess some reasons for sales not doing as well (which is ridiculously hard to figure out by the way, as every site mixes up just how 'well' the sales are going), I'd have to attribute it to:

1. Shitty marketing. Back in 2007, they had preview books for 4e that cost about the same amount as their other splatbooks (which are already ridiculously overpriced). Needless to say, no one wanted to buy that.

3. Piracy. There is a reason why they flipped out over their online pdf's being leaked by Touhou, and if you take a look at the figures of pirated Player's Handbook 2 books, you start to realize just how much of a problem that really is.

I honestly think that some of their shitty marketing ideas are the CAUSE of expanding piracy. I know a lot of pirates would rather get legitimate copies, but things like "The legit PDF site costs more (WTF?!?!?) than buying a physical book, and you can't get a PDF to simply supplement your print copy" or "Preview books cost 30 bucks" mean that they turn to piracy. And if they didn't know how to pirate, this gives them a VERY strong incentive to learn. And then spread it to their friends so that their friends can use their books with them. Thus, I believe WotC has a lot of blame to put on themselves for encouraging piracy.

Likewise, their response against piracy is retarded. Taking away a legitimate medium to get PDFs won't decrease piracy, it'll increase it because there's a demand that the legal market isn't filling (electronic copies). There is nothing stopping people from making these from print books. And even if their pdf sales online were zero, maybe that's because they made the pdfs cost even more than print books which is just one of the dumbest things I've ever heard...

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:21 pm

Kaelik wrote:
Previn wrote:That said, the same court papers put the number of downloads of the illegal pdf at less than 3,500 (I can't recall the exact number). However, there has never been a reliable link between pirated digital copies, and it's effects on sales.
As a simple example, how many people on this forum have downloaded the PHB for free, and how many actually play 4e?

For me, torrentting it was just like going to the Book store to look it over and find out it sucks and I don't want it.

I can image that if the PHB was downloaded 3,500 times, that only like 500 of those people would have bought it if they couldn't download, and probably half of them did buy it.

+1. I bought it just to check the anti hype for myself. I'm not sure if that counts as me being disappointed or a double negative, but suffice it to say I found less than no incentive to financially support them.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:31 pm

Previn wrote:However, there has never been a reliable link between pirated digital copies, and it's effects on sales.

Some unreliable figures:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=17350

claims that preventing 1,000 illegal downloads generates around 1 new sale. With typical piracy rates of 90%, this means that a company can increase sales by around 1% if they manage to eliminate piracy.

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 1:20 am

Remember that 3.5 and those books were in the land of Kazaa, and that was the time of really easy (even if not quick) downloading.

What is this TouHou? I know about torrents and rapidsearch, but not TouHou.

On the topic of what's going to change with 5e, I don't think we'll see the OGL again. It seems that everyone who understood the OGL is gone from Wizards now.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:23 am

I'm not really sure either. The only thing similar I know is TouHou-[EDITED] from /tg/. And I doubt he's what they speak of. Maybe.

(And can someone explain to me what Touhou is anyway? All I've gotten is magical maids.)

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:40 am

There are much better ways to get books than torrents. You can get pretty much any RPG-related publication (including stuff like magazine issues) on direct download.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:59 am

Starmaker wrote:At least the paizils have a sob story to tell about how they're working day and night to bring the best in gaming to the poor masses oppressed by the evil soulless corporation. They were actually clever bastards, pretending to look for designers and releasing alpha# and now beta

Paizo can suck my balls. They made such a huge production about asking people to playtest their new rules so they could get input from the players to create a "new and improved" version of the 3.X rules, but they never had any intention of using any of the feedback that they received. It was just a big marketing stunt to draw in the players that they intended to pander to (i.e. people that play broken spellcasters). WOTC may be incompetent, but I feel like Paizo outright lied to the gaming community, and they can fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

As far as 4th Edition goes: we got a hold of the 4E PDF and looked at it. Most of us decided it was shit and deleted it from our computers. The few that liked the game went out and bought the books. We've played a few times, but it seems less like D&D and more like Heroquest, and thus is incapable of holding our interest for very long at all.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:12 am

Ganbare Gincun wrote:We've played a few times, but it seems less like D&D and more like Heroquest, and thus is incapable of holding our interest for very long at all.

Actually, I think this is exactly what they were going for.

4th isn't about epic campaigns, and long stories, it's about the short term gaming fix when a couple guys get together and want to play some fantasy game. The problem with this that these people don't spread the hobby, and they don't keep buying supplement after supplement, especially when it's just rules.

The only reason that I would expect 5th edition to look any different is if WotC realizes that they will not compete in the board game market. And in all honesty, that is what 4th is; a board game that is sold to you in parts.
- Rules (spread out over multiple books)
- Miniatures (sold in random sets)
- Board (sold in tiles and as pieces)
- Power cards

Really, the similarities between Heroquest and 4th are disturbing now that I think about it.

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 7:47 am

You know, I could really go for Warhammer Quest about now.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:45 pm

Ganbare Gincun wrote:
Starmaker wrote:At least the paizils have a sob story to tell about how they're working day and night to bring the best in gaming to the poor masses oppressed by the evil soulless corporation. They were actually clever bastards, pretending to look for designers and releasing alpha# and now beta
Paizo can suck my balls. They made such a huge production about asking people to playtest their new rules so they could get input from the players to create a "new and improved" version of the 3.X rules, but they never had any intention of using any of the feedback that they received. It was just a big marketing stunt to draw in the players that they intended to pander to (i.e. people that play broken spellcasters). WOTC may be incompetent, but I feel like Paizo outright lied to the gaming community, and they can fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

As far as 4th Edition goes: we got a hold of the 4E PDF and looked at it. Most of us decided it was shit and deleted it from our computers. The few that liked the game went out and bought the books. We've played a few times, but it seems less like D&D and more like Heroquest, and thus is incapable of holding our interest for very long at all.

And it didn't even do that. Else most of this board would be riding its cock.

Iron Mongler · Post by **Iron Mongler** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:31 pm

Now that splatbooks don't contain much in the way of core rules by definition, and there are pre-made cards for new powers, so there's no incentive to buy any splatbooks except honesty and the books having interesting fluff that you might want to read and re-read (they don't, but Dragon and Dungeon did, and that's why I bought the magazines for $20 per issue back in 2004).

Draconomicon I: Chromatic Dragons, Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead, and Manual of the Planes are all pretty useful and interesting because of their fluff (your mileage may vary with the Manual though).

I'm not really sure either. The only thing similar I know is TouHou-[EDITED] from /tg/. And I doubt he's what they speak of. Maybe.

It is. Touhou provided all the books for 4e on 4chan's /rs/ board, and even now when you're looking for scanned copies, /tg/ and Demonoid are the first two places to check.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:32 pm

DeadlyReed wrote:You know, I could really go for Warhammer Quest about now.

I actually played a WQ 'campaign' until 8th level. It gets easier as you level--the traps don't get any harder, only the monsters do.

Playing at the higher levels is like one of those children's songs, where the lyrics are about the same, just one thing gets added each time ("I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly..." or even "The Twelve Days of Christmas...").

Eventually the complications add up to the point where your head feels like it's about to explode keeping track of all the little stuff.

DnD4.0 is pretty much WQ at around 5th level of play...except the latter makes no illusions about being Dungeons and Dragons, or even a RPG.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 3:51 pm

Meikle641 wrote:I'm not really sure either. The only thing similar I know is TouHou-[EDITED] from /tg/. And I doubt he's what they speak of. Maybe.

(And can someone explain to me what Touhou is anyway? All I've gotten is magical maids.)

Touhou is a mango about magical maids with crazy cosmic powers. Actually, I think it's a series of "fly through space pew pew pew" vidya games, with a manga based on it. There is a guy on /tg/ called Touhou or Touhou-[EDITED], and he has been amazing with pirating stuff quickly. It might be that he was an inside agent, or perhaps he just took his books apart and scanned them overnight.

He also made custom power cards, ALL with Touhou fan-art (interesting note: whenever something is *just* released as a torrent for /tg/, there's a 50% chance it's not the real thing, and is just Touhou porn. In the case of 4E, this would be a vast improvement), and eventually got slapped down by WotC.

Apparently Touhou even got charged or something. The running joke is now that 4chan is banned from playing 4th Edition. This is possibly the first time I have ever wished to consider myself one of them.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:39 pm

Ganbare Gincun wrote:It was just a big marketing stunt to draw in the players that they intended to pander to (i.e. people that play broken spellcasters). WOTC may be incompetent, but I feel like Paizo outright lied to the gaming community, and they can fuck off as far as I'm concerned.

That's what I was saying. Paizils' dick move allowed them, among other things, to publish stupid shit and get away with it because they're still "developing". Nothing excuses being dicks, but slapping "alpha" on the cover is, from a public relations standpoint, a working excuse for publishing strong brokenation.

WotC went on record saying they want feedback and also lied. But they didn't come out and said "We're still developing but please buy the alpha version because we're rebelling against an evil corporation", so why the fuck are they so smug about fucking up?
http://media.gleemax.com/podcasts/DnD_20090527.mp3

Kaelik wrote:For me, torrentting it was just like going to the Book store to look it over and find out it sucks and I don't want it.

In Russian game stores, game books are kept locked in glass cases so there's no way to find out whether a book sucks rules-wise or not in the minute or so the worker lets me look through it. I had the basic set sitting in my amazon wishlist for quite a time and intended to buy it if it was any good. It wasn't.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:10 pm

Wow. That random hentai actually is better than 4.Fail. And that's fucked up. Especially given how low the bar is set.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:43 pm

Starmaker wrote:In Russian game stores, game books are kept locked in glass cases so there's no way to find out whether a book sucks rules-wise or not in the minute or so the worker lets me look through it. I had the basic set sitting in my amazon wishlist for quite a time and intended to buy it if it was any good. It wasn't.

Talk about encouraging piracy. Fuck that shit. I'd pirate every single damn thing before even going to the store if I had that shit to deal with. Not going to buy something blind.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 7:30 pm

Koumei wrote:
Meikle641 wrote:I'm not really sure either. The only thing similar I know is TouHou-[EDITED] from /tg/. And I doubt he's what they speak of. Maybe.

(And can someone explain to me what Touhou is anyway? All I've gotten is magical maids.)
Touhou is a mango about magical maids with crazy cosmic powers. Actually, I think it's a series of "fly through space pew pew pew" vidya games, with a manga based on it. There is a guy on /tg/ called Touhou or Touhou-[EDITED], and he has been amazing with pirating stuff quickly. It might be that he was an inside agent, or perhaps he just took his books apart and scanned them overnight.

He also made custom power cards, ALL with Touhou fan-art (interesting note: whenever something is *just* released as a torrent for /tg/, there's a 50% chance it's not the real thing, and is just Touhou porn. In the case of 4E, this would be a vast improvement), and eventually got slapped down by WotC.

Apparently Touhou even got charged or something. The running joke is now that 4chan is banned from playing 4th Edition. This is possibly the first time I have ever wished to consider myself one of them.

You do realise that the Touhoufags are plural, right? One (or more - anonymity) of them was the epic scanner. Others are just good Optimisers - producing the Nineball 4e build that can take Orcus down in 1-2 actions (iirc). Others are interested in fluff.

In particular, half the time something is released for /tg/ it's Touhou futanari. Traditional ever since the leaked copies of the D&D 4e were posted under the filenames "Touhou Futa.pdf" and the numerous prior, fake, releases containing Touhou Futa instead of the promised goods. At least once it's been Kyonko Futa, due to Kyonko's popularity with followers of Xiombarg.

The fastest explanations of Touhou and the relationship to /tg/ are the 1d4chan article and the Touhou Wiki.

sake · Post by **sake** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:47 pm

Actually it wasn't just touhou futa, they would also use the WoW d20 book, that god awful furry rpg Ironclaw and later, after touhou futa became a running gag, a pdf of Twilight all labeled as the PHB2, Arcane Power, or what ever new splatbook had just come out.

As far as I can remember the only pdf that a touhou [EDITED] actually leaked was the PHB2, which he was then sued for (or at least threatened with, as he wasn't even a US citizen) as WotC revealed that they put hidden watermarks in their pdfs.

Shortly afterwards WotC pulled their pdf sales. /tg/ went back to just scanning the books and started actually labeling the pdfs as TOUHOUFUTA, which lead to some confusion and fun threads.

And why the fuck do I know any of this?

Iron Mongler · Post by **Iron Mongler** » Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:55 pm

Personally I loved when they uploaded Cadillacs and Dinosaurs the pnp RPG. I didn't even know that existed.

Also, reasons for bad sales on the Martial Power/Arcane Power splatbooks would be that:

a.) All but about 5 paragraphs in the book are just put up on DDI at the end of the month anyway, and the character builder is much cheaper/easier to pirate.

b.) Nothing but mechanics. I remember way back when I looked over books like Complete Divine, and while the fluff is absolute nonsense in the book, it was at least there.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:05 am

Seeing as historically the property has changed hands nearly once between each edition:

TSR shakeup - and Gygax's issues with his divorce
Epic Failure of Dragon Dice sinks TSR and end of 2nd edition
WotC buys D&D and makes 3rd ed
Hasbro Buys WotC just after 3rd ed - mainly for the Pokemon license.

It will be worthy of note if 5th ed is even published by the same company that published 4th.

Now Hasbro does end up owning and hold the rights to a disturbing percentage of decent games written over the past century (Yahtzee, Monopoly, Milton Bradley, Avalon Hill, WotC, etc) so it's likely that they will retain the rights, but given the current economic outlook and the investment return on RPGs (keep in mind you're competing with people who post volumes of quality material on message boards just for fun) and I could very well see the property being sold off to the next guy like Charles Darrow or Richard Garfield and becoming entirely their vision.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:20 am

When Napster was at its peak, before crackdown, US music sales increased for once that year by 10%. Every year since their crackdown, the market has shrank (including online sales) by 10%.

I wonder how it'll be this year...

-Crissa

Ravengm · Post by **Ravengm** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:39 am

To be honest, at the ridiculous price that WotC prices some of their material, I'm not surprised people have been downloading it or flat out not getting a copy in any way. I personally don't have an extra $34.95 lying around when I can just buy the power cards for $15 or whatever they're being sold for. Someone else can teach me the core rules, and I'll just use my power cards for reference.

This especially goes with the DMG, which contained exactly zero rules mechanics I didn't know or cared about. Rules for traps? Wing it. Skill challenges? Retarded, houserule it. Diseases? Terrible math, do it myself. It's kind of annoying to note that I don't need the book to run anything, especially since they put all the magic item stuff into the PHB.

sake · Post by **sake** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:58 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote: Now Hasbro does end up owning and hold the rights to a disturbing percentage of decent games written over the past century (Yahtzee, Monopoly, Milton Bradley, Avalon Hill, WotC, etc) so it's likely that they will retain the rights, but given the current economic outlook and the investment return on RPGs (keep in mind you're competing with people who post volumes of quality material on message boards just for fun) and I could very well see the property being sold off to the next guy like Charles Darrow or Richard Garfield and becoming entirely their vision.

I don't really see Hasbro ever selling it off, giving to some design team besides WotC maybe, but not selling it. It's too valuable as a property to dump even if the actual game sales are in the toilet. It's like Warner Bros. who'll keep DC Comics afloat no matter what, just because Superman/Batman are too valuable a property not to keep around.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 4:54 pm

DeadlyReed wrote:You know, I could really go for Warhammer Quest about now.

If I could only come up with a good way to have WQ-style mob AI for DnD4e I'd be set.

Honestly, the game works best that way.