Zero Buzz on 5E...Is It Dead Out The Gate?

Mundangerous · Post by **Mundangerous** » Sun Apr 19, 2015 5:49 am

DSMatticus wrote:Ahh. In the article, you seem a lot more uncertain about whether they only stop counting games when they're deleted or if there might be some unknown mechanism by which games are dropped from the sample for inactivity. Not that I disagree with you - I seriously doubt they strike any games from the sample - but is there any particular reason for the change of mind?

It's less a change of mind and more a change of medium. Call it a journalistic hedge?

The aggregate of what they've said leaves me no doubt, but I don't have an official quote that would validate me claiming the statement as fact. You said "neither of us has any idea...," which isn't true; I have a lot of information on it, just not quite enough to go to print with.

Aharon · Post by **Aharon** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 8:22 am

So, I played last Sunday. Thanks for all the tips, the game was fun and I felt my contribution to the party was ok

Maxboy · Post by **Maxboy** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:19 pm

seems like 5e didnt crash and burn as the DEN predicted

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:22 pm

Have you been lurking here for 5 years just to say that?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 11:25 pm

Maxboy wrote:seems like 5e didnt crash and burn as the DEN predicted

Wait, is 5e actually making money? This is news to me.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 12:27 am

Kaelik wrote:
Maxboy wrote:seems like 5e didnt crash and burn as the DEN predicted
Wait, is 5e actually making money? This is news to me.

After the 4E promises of 50 million dollars a year, self-policed division comparable to Magic:The Gathering all turned out to be false, HASBRO went on a disappointed and vindictive rampage against Dungeons and Dragons staff. I think HASBRO has largely written off this aspect of WOTC as a legacy product and they want to keep it around so that the Dungeons and Dragons brand still has people talking about it and playing a live edition of the game. They're keeping it around for naming rights and bragging rights and that is about it. Maybe down the line they'll try to monetize it with another crack at a movie or try a television show. With Game of Thrones being shit-hot and all the superhero movies making money hand over fist, hey. Just having the name around has a value.

They don't expect to make much money off it and so long as the Merry Band of Seattle Dopes still brings in whatever million dollars a year and has a live game out, regardless of quality, well, HASBRO isn't necessarily happy, but their meager expectations are being met.

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 1:23 am

Insomniac wrote:They're keeping it around for naming rights and bragging rights and that is about it. Maybe down the line they'll try to monetize it with another crack at a movie or try a television show. With Game of Thrones being shit-hot and all the superhero movies making money hand over fist, hey. Just having the name around has a value.

This is precisely their plan. They're in a lawsuit right now to get the rights back, and are in negotiations with Universal to start production if they do.

If they don't get the rights back, then Sweetpea (the little studio that put out the Syfy movies) sells them to Warner Bros. So either way, someone is making a big-budget D&D movie soon-ish.

CaptPike · Post by **CaptPike** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 2:04 am

maglag wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote: 4th edition D&D was a pile of ass. That much was obvious from a bit before the books actually got released. Paizo was offering a straight 3e D&D plus good art. Even without the name, it was obvious that they were the horse to bet on. K and I tried to get them to make a better 3e, but even "some dude on the internet's house rules with good art" was still number one with a bullet when their opponents were a dying 4e D&D and a dead nWoD.

-Username17
Well, playing Devil's advocate a bit here, it was just more than good art-It was also their OGL policy. Pathfinder has a giant, well organized and free wiki with pretty much all of their rules. 4e did not.

If you want to attract people to play Pathfinder, you can just point them to the wiki and let them check the classes and feats and skills and whatnot at their leisure without them spending a single dime. That's HUGE!

Meanwhile if you wanted to get a person to play 4e, you have to tell them first to get PHB I+II+III+vaults+whatever for hundreds of bucks up front. And then drag around hundreds of pages of errata. Or pay the online subscription.

Well, that and Pathfinder welcomed all manners of 3rd party publishers, while Wotc told them "If you want to do supplements for 4e, you gotta bend backwards to us".

hardly, you needed to know enough of the rules to build a character, so a PHBi or something. Plus the online sub, which were shared often and before they went to online only you only needed it once to download it.

from what limited data we have 4e succeeded before they soured the water with essentials. pathfinder appealed to people who had bought into the 3e mindset enough to not see its flaws anymore, while 4e was new and its flaws were glaring.

Maxboy · Post by **Maxboy** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:44 am

Stubbazubba wrote:Have you been lurking here for 5 years just to say that?

Yes

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 3:47 am

Maxboy wrote:
Stubbazubba wrote:Have you been lurking here for 5 years just to say that?
Yes

Even for Internet standards, that's fucking pathetic. I hope it was worth it.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:35 am

Maxboy wrote:seems like 5e didnt crash and burn as the DEN predicted

By what measure?

The books have a relatively high price on them, so profit per sale should be good, and the scale of Amazon discounts will tempt people. That's a plus.

It seems like sales of the Pathfinder core book have fallen somewhat and 5e may be just beating it at the moment, but beating sales on a 6 year old book with good sales already under it's belt and getting near the end of it's edition cycle, that's not a big deal. Like, the Star Wars core book was on top for a little while when it launched, it happens. Still a plus.

But there's no splatbooks. Not even high-volume stuff like a "Manual of the Planes" or a "Fighters, now with less suck" or a "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" or a "Fantasy Asia, with Ninjas on Dinosaurs". They're probably doing something at the offices, looking busy at least, but it's not a great sign to have to farm out work a handful of modules a year and do almost nothing else: this isn't 1975.

The core rules themselves are pretty vacant. The skill system isn't really there, for instance, but they promised an exploration game which doesn't exist at all, and huge chunks of stuff are "ask the DM" where the DMG says to just wing it.

The disadvantage mechanic is a disaster and the official stance is now that you shouldn't use it at all, along with (of course) anything else that gives you trouble. The web is full of people defending it by blaming the DM for using the rules as written instead of making up a bunch of bullshit in response to the PCs casually ignoring monsters or getting completely trounced by them seemingly at random.

If you mean, "it's totally selling books", well, sort of. They have almost no books to sell and the ones they are selling can barely beat a double retread of a 15-year old edition that lacks the brand name. If you mean, "it exists at all", well, that is a bar it has crossed. The core books exist with art in them, and you can easily find them second hand, barely used.

Gnorman · Post by **Gnorman** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:36 am

fuck it, moving this to the other thread

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:46 am

tussock wrote:
Maxboy wrote:seems like 5e didnt crash and burn as the DEN predicted
The core rules themselves are pretty vacant. The skill system isn't really there, for instance, but they promised an exploration game which doesn't exist at all, and huge chunks of stuff are "ask the DM" where the DMG says to just wing it.

The disadvantage mechanic is a disaster and the official stance is now that you shouldn't use it at all, along with (of course) anything else that gives you trouble. The web is full of people defending it by blaming the DM for using the rules as written instead of making up a bunch of bullshit in response to the PCs casually ignoring monsters or getting completely trounced by them seemingly at random.

I think that this is probably the best part of talking to 5E fans. Paying for a book that gives you permission to make up a system that works for you!

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:30 am

I'm not sure by what standard 5e didn't crash out of the gate. 4th edition, which I will remind you was a colossal failure that got the lead sacked every single year it was a going concern, was still able to put up some metrics by which it bested 3rd edition. I mean, they were weird weasel wordy metrics, but they existed. And WotC was able to selectively release those factoids while talking up the edition.

So for the first entire year of 4th edition being out, the 4rries would chortle and laugh at my doom saying. They would say that because 4e had "more preorders than any previous edition (including 3rd)" or that it had "stronger first week sales than any previous edition (including 3rd)" or that it had "three printings in the first three months" that it was number 1 with a bullet. But of course, it wasn't. 4e was a failure, and its strong preorder sales wee just a legacy of 3e's popularity. Word of mouth sales were shit beyond belief and the total sales of all books combined for the first year didn't match what 3e was able to pull off in the first month.

And while I like to pat myself on the back for having mostly seen through the charade and correctly identified that 4e was shit on toast and wasn't going to overtake heavily house ruled 3.5 in my home games or gaming society at large, even I didn't realize how badly it was actually doing. 3rd edition had a staggered release. The first month, the PHB was available for sale and the DMG and Monster Manual weren't. 4th edition brought out all three books together, and to a larger marketing fanfare. The "first weeks sales" hurdle was less than a hundred thousand books (the 3e PHB sold over 300,000 copies in the first month, so the first week was probably ~75,000 books), and they hit that number with the sales of three books combined. It's entirely likely that books I've contributed to like Street Magic for Shadowrun sold more copies than the 4th edition DMG. That's terrible. But I was the subject of 4rry ridicule for years, because the facts that WotC did release had a lot of positive spin.

On the backdrop of WotC being shown to be willing to use that much lipstick on a pig to make an edition that was the RPG equivalent of the Ford Edsel look like it was commercially successful, what does it say that for 5th edition they literally have not been able to come up with a single positive fact? They still say boosterish things about how how they believe sales will be strong in the future or something, but they haven't been able to say one thing about 5th edition that is actually good as things currently stand.

5e has the most unambitious release schedule of an edition of D&D since Gary Gygax was typing the books up himself without a computer. WotC hasn't said a single thing that even sounds like 5e is doing well by any metric. The most positive thing they've said is that they were able to get a book into the #1 place on Amazon (for a few hours) by offering people 40% off if they bought the book through Amazon vs. buying it elsewhere. But 3rd edition was able to get that #1 spot for longer without giving any special incentives for people to buy through Amazon. Given the size of the incentive, the length of time they kept that spot is actually kind of sad.

-Username17

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:51 am

Well I wouldn't suspect that 5E would've had a chance to go very far. It didn't have the good will that 4E had from 3rd. They still (for no reason) didn't bring back OGL. I believe there was some big talk about the game being "modular" that I don't believe really materialized and there was a big problem with the release of the DMG who's contents were underwhelming (or so I'm told). The best word I've heard people give 5E is that it "allows GMs to run the game THEIR way without being hindered by actual rules".

Why yes, I've had people say that with a straight face.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 7:33 am

tussock wrote:The disadvantage mechanic is a disaster and the official stance is now that you shouldn't use it at all, along with (of course) anything else that gives you trouble.

Oh? Could you provide a link or something? That looks interesting.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:41 am

@ishy, I wish I did. It's something I've seen a couple of 5e supporters claim and assumed it was true. One I found went

Justisaur, have you run into DMs who are handing out advantage/disadvantage over and above what is described in the rules? It isn't very clear in the books, but the developers have basically stated that you should only do so in very limited circumstances. If a DM is giving you disadvantage over minutiae, then you are getting screwed.

When what the rules say is there's a bunch of places you use disadvantage all the time, like in the unfavourable terrain found in one of their modules, and also suggest adding it for flavour whenever the DM is inspired to by circumstances. But ... maybe it's ...

OH GOD NO. You made me read 5e discussions. One's all about how obviously the Halfling's racial ability to hide in combat doesn't let him hide in combat. And even if it did he wouldn't count as hidden because it's in combat. And even if it did count he wouldn't get advantage on all his attacks all the time because THE DM CAN FIX IT. ARGHSPSTPNS!

It is quite funny how people keep finding rules in weird places that contradict whatever rule anyone is having any trouble with, and then find other rules to contradict both of them. That's not helping the conversations, it makes them even less sane, but it is funny.

Neon Sequitur · Post by **Neon Sequitur** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:58 pm

I am pleased to announce that this is now officially the least relevant thread, on the least relevant gaming forum, on the entire internet.

You're welcome.

Hasbro CEO: "D&D is Really on a Tear"

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.ph ... T5NeZM8oxI

Butthurt · Post by **Butthurt** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:17 pm

Damn, Neon. I'm sorry it's not just me.

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:27 pm

Isn't the context of that quote comparing D&D's Q1 earnings for this year compared to last year? The delta between Q1 of 2014 & 2015...

EDIT: I will say this, being able to put D&D on Wal-Mart shelves is a *huge* sales advantage.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:31 pm

Yet "really on a tear" is corporatespeak with no hard evidence backing it up. What is he supposed to say? "Our other game divisions are up and Magic: The Gathering has been selling like hotcakes for a decade now, but Dungeons and Dragons is shitting the bed."

Especially for a cooperative gaming experience like Dungeons and Dragons.
"Nobody bought 5E and nobody is playing it if they bought it, but you go right ahead and drop 70 dollars on it cuz its got purty pictures."

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:34 pm

Neon Sequitur wrote:http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.ph ... T5NeZM8oxI

Yeah, from the comments:

Jester Canuck wrote:Here's the actual document:
http://investor.hasbro.com/releasede...leaseID=907255
With the transcript:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3083...pt?part=single

D&D is mentioned on page 5 where he says:
Games was flattish. It was up in the U.S., down a little bit internationally, but we have a number of games that grew within the quarter. In fact, a raft of games including Dungeons & Dragons, which is really on a tear, Risk, Scrabble, Trouble, Life, Candy Land, CLUE and OUIJA were all up in the quarter. And we're seeing great sell-through of our games. Our Games POS was up in the first quarter in the U.S., and up in many markets around the world. And so down a little bit internationally, but we view a lot of that as just timing on some of our new games initiatives.
D&D is not mentioned in the actual report (while MtG is), and D&D is just name-dropped the lengthy presentation. It's just part of a list of games that did better in Q1 2015 than in Q1 2014. While it's cool that he singled out D&D for an adjective ("on a tear"), D&D sales in Q1 2014 were likely... non-existent. And it's uncertain if he knows a new edition was released (he doesn't call out 5e). So he might just be comparing the numbers and seeing the *huge* spike in revenue without context.

For the record, the 5e PHB dropped in August 2014. So the comparison is between an actively produced and promoted game line in Q1 2015, and *cricket chirps* in Q1 2014.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:05 pm

Breaking News: D&D grew during the first full quarter its new edition had been on shelves. Detractors who anticipated the announcement of a surprise 4E buyback program were flabbergasted when negative sales failed to materialize. One bewildered consumer holding a 4E PHB commented, "I just don't understand. I thought for sure they would give me back my money. Have you read this book? It's trash."

In related news, the 5E PHB is on a trajectory to be the greatest selling book of all time and is expected by brand director Nathan Stewart to bring in revenues in excess of "all the money." Rumors suggest a D&D-Transformers tie-in film, directed by Michael Bay, is being developed.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:24 pm

Neon Sequitur wrote:I am pleased to announce that this is now officially the least relevant thread, on the least relevant gaming forum, on the entire internet.

You're welcome.

Hasbro CEO: "D&D is Really on a Tear"
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.ph ... T5NeZM8oxI

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:43 pm

MGuy wrote:
Neon Sequitur wrote:I am pleased to announce that this is now officially the least relevant thread, on the least relevant gaming forum, on the entire internet.

You're welcome.

Hasbro CEO: "D&D is Really on a Tear"
http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.ph ... T5NeZM8oxI

I'm glad you captured this on a quote. This will look hilarious in 2017 or so.