D&D 5e has failed

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:53 pm

erik wrote:
Ghremdal wrote:The kickstarter looks dead in the water though. 40k raised, 390k left to go, and 20 days left.
Erfworld's creator is pimping that kickstarter but looks like to no avail. Just check out the comments below the pimping post.

Yeah Rob Balder hawking their kickstarter doesn't give me any more faith that it isn't just vaporware. In fact, it actively makes me less likely to contribute.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 9:39 am

ishy wrote:Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but I got the vibe trapdoor never planned on delivering for wotc in the first place.
That they only used wotc for name recognition.

This is almost certainly not what happened. Selling even an official D&D tic-tac-toe app would be worth more than anything a fly-by-night app developer like Trapdoor would be likely to see in the next decade. The only reasonable interpretation of the events is that WotC pulled the plug on them suddenly and they were sad about that. Now why WotC pulled the plug is a big unknown. Pick one or more of the following:

WotC was already busy canceling the line, which is why there isn't anything on the release schedule, and canceling app tie-ins was done in the same breath as cancelling work on the Monster Manual 2 and the Complete Book of Warriors.
WotC has no real idea how software development works and they freaked out about completely normal delays and feature cuts.
Trapdoor got the contract in the first place because someone was dating someone, and when the romance ended so did the corporate association.
At a key milestone demonstration for WotC, Trapdoor's build crashed ugly and the suits walked out of the meeting disgusted.
Trapdoor's project is months behind schedule and is languishing in an early alpha state with no evidence of moving forward from that in the projected design cycle of 5e and there just didn't seem to be any point in putting any hopes in that pile.
Trapdoor's project is basically vaporware and they haven't done shit with the months and funding that they've had and there's no evidence that they have the vision, expertise, or managerial dedication to ever produce a finished project.

Obviously, we can't know for sure, but the collapsed partnership was almost definitely a result of WotC putting their foot down. Whether they did that because WotC doesn't know what they are doing or because Trapdoor doesn't know what they are doing or both is unknowable at the moment. But this was absolutely definitely not just as keikaku by Trapdoor. We can pretty much reject that idea out of hand.

-Username17

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 10:43 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Trapdoor's project is basically vaporware and they haven't done shit with the months and funding that they've had and there's no evidence that they have the vision, expertise, or managerial dedication to ever produce a finished project.

But yet Mearls still has a job.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 2:56 pm

Seerow wrote: Yeah Rob Balder hawking their kickstarter doesn't give me any more faith that it isn't just vaporware. In fact, it actively makes me less likely to contribute.

Agreed. Rob Balder doesn't appreciate professionalism enough for me to really trust his judgement. A lot of his rhetoric seems tied up in giving jobs to fans and people who genuinely care or some other sappy bullshit. He completely underestimates the value of hired guns who will actually hand in their work on time because it's their fucking job and thus has a place on their priority list that won't be thrown off track by a fit of pique or their cat getting sick.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Sun Dec 28, 2014 7:06 am

So... On a slightly different note, anyone else seen this article? Kind of interesting to see D&D even get some press like this, but i'm sure some people noticed when 4th Ed. came out. My favourite part is how the journalist calls up a guy from one store, who says "things are up 25%"!

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/st ... nt=event25

As a teenager in the 1980s, Charles Starrett spent hours playing Dungeons & Dragons with his pals but stopped after high school. His interest was rekindled as a father when he introduced basic role-playing games to his two daughters when they were six years old, and he also persuaded his wife, Jung, to play.

“They just gobbled it up,” Jung Starrett says of her daughters’ interest in D&D.

Now the couple and their now 14-year-old daughters, Sophia and Julia, gather around their Brookline dining room table regularly on weekends to toss polyhedral dice, slay orcs and hobgoblins, and tell an unpredictable, unfolding fantasy story, together.

As it turns 40 this year, the pioneering role-playing game (or “RPG”) appears to be enjoying something of a renaissance after a period of decline. Once the province primarily of white, suburban teen boys and young men, D&D is drawing a more diverse group of players, owing in part to the widespread popularity of fantasy books, films, and television shows. And a new update of the game is renewing interest among veteran players.

An estimated 20 million people have played the game and spent at least $1 billion on its products since D&D’s early days. But the game, which experienced strong growth throughout the 1970s and ’80s, began a slump in the 2000s. The game’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, does not make sales figures available, but analysts say that RPG sales have been declining for years, partly supplanted by the surge in video games and Internet culture.

In response, Wizards, a Washington subsidiary of Providence toy-and-game giant Hasbro, launched a revamp of the game’s rules this year, informally known as “Fifth Edition,” that returns D&D to its story-based roots. The response has been positive.

“Nearly every player I’ve spoken to says they like the new rules,” says David Ewalt, author of “Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It.” When one of the core rule books, the D&D “Player’s Handbook,” was published in August, it climbed to the top of Amazon sales charts and hit number one on both Publisher’s Weekly and Wall Street Journal’s hardcover nonfiction lists.

Distributors and retailers say the new edition is selling better than expected, says Milton Griepp, founder and CEO of ICv2, a publication that covers geek culture. “And expectations were high.”

Nationally, and locally, retailers are saying the new edition is doing well and drawing players to game nights. John Beresford, books manager at Pandemonium Books and Games in Cambridge, reports that the store’s weekly in-store D&D events have grown by at least 25 percent. “Fifth edition is getting a lot of nostalgia gamers back in to take a look and is also drawing in a number of new gamers,” he says.

Unlike the last edition, released in 2008, the new D&D focuses less on mimicking video game-like action and combat, and more on ease of play, role-playing, and narrative. Also making the game more accessible, the rules ask players to consider characters who do “not conform to the broader culture’s expectations of sex, gender, and sexual behavior.” Your 12th level wizard might be gay.

In addition to getting a boost from the game update, D&D and other RPGs are also finding fresh player bases.

“There’s been a real expansion of the audience in recent years,” says Ewalt. When Ewalt went to his first game convention 20 years ago, the attendees were largely white, male, ages 15 to 40. When he attended the massive role-playing game and tabletop game convention called GenCon this summer in Indianapolis, “there were men and women, kids and adults, and people of all races and cultures.’’

Liz Schuh, head of publishing and licensing for Dungeons & Dragons, agrees. “We are seeing a broad mix of ages playing D&D today,’’ she says. “The game spans generations, as parents introduce their kids to the game that inspired them as kids.’’

One reason new audiences are embracing D&D is that so many of its key concepts are already familiar to a generation steeped in video games. D&D spawned a legion of game designers and programmers, and the industry borrowed heavily from D&D tropes such as outfitting characters, leveling up, cooperative game play, representing character traits as statistics, fantasy battles, dungeon environments, and controlling avatars.

D&D also benefits from the popularity of fantasy entertainment such as the “Lord of the Rings,” “Hobbit” and “Harry Potter’’ books and movies, and hit TV shows like “Game of Thrones.” As in the case of video games, the appetite for consuming fantasy worlds is one that D&D actually had a role in nurturing.

A whole generation of screenwriters, novelists, directors, musicians, and actors who once played D&D — including Stephen Colbert, the late Robin Williams, Matt Groening, Vin Diesel, and George R. R. Martin — have proudly embraced their basement-dwelling days as a nerdy badge of honor.

“All those kids who were obsessed with the game in the early 1980s have grown up, and many of them entered creative pursuits because D&D got them excited about telling stories and creating adventures,” says Ewalt.

The game’s imaginative reach extends beyond popular entertainment. “Gaming certainly provided me with an imaginative praxis that helped prepare me for the imaginative praxis of being a writer,” says Junot Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and MIT professor whose group played D&D in the 1980s. “The game was an important source of solace, inspiration, learning excitement and play for us.”

Chris Robichaud, author of “Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy” and a D&D veteran since age 10, is bringing RPGs into the classroom as a learning tool. At the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he is a lecturer in ethics and public policy, Robichaud has been teaching D&D-like simulation called Patient Zero. “I wanted to give policymakers the creative, outside-the-box thinking opportunities that only a tabletop design with a gamemaster at the helm could really create,” says Robichaud, who believes his game “has the distinction” of being Harvard’s first “zombie pandemic tabletop simulation.”

The potential educational benefits are not lost on younger players. Back at the Starrett home, Julia and Sophia say they play primarily because it’s fun, but the game has also imparted valuable life skills.

“I have the reputation as a walking dictionary, which I got from playing D&D,” says Sophia, who has been blogging about “the benefits of playing D&D.” Beyond building your vocabulary, the two sisters reel off myriad other boons. The game improves critical thinking, decision-making, spatial intelligence, and team-building.

“In D&D, if you’re going to succeed,” says Julia, “you have to be part of a group of very diverse individuals all going for the same goal.”

Indeed, the role-playing game is a perfect tool for forging communities and connections “which can further knit our society together,” says dad Charles. “We can even explore living a life as someone who believes quite differently from how we actually believe, which increases understanding and empathy towards those who differ from ourselves.”

Like a warrior after an epic battle, D&D has survived to fight again — and its players hope it will keep on rolling for another 40 years.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:55 pm

In what possible way did D&D experience a slump beginning in 2000?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 2:26 pm

Kaelik wrote:In what possible way did D&D experience a slump beginning in 2000?

It didn't. The quote in question is true as stated, though of course it is carefully crafted to deceive people.

But the game, which experienced strong growth throughout the 1970s and ’80s, began a slump in the 2000s.

Of course, D&D sales in 1971 were zero and D&D sales at the end of the 70s were some other number and sales growth was infinity percent by definition. The 80s saw the introduction of D&D to some large markets, and some pretty strong growth.

Unmentioned of course is the sputtering sales and bankruptcy of the holding corporation in the 90s. Also unmentioned is the recovery and unprecedented sales brought in by 3rd edition in the 2000 to 2006 period.

4th edition was a trainwreck and came out in 2008. One could state accurately (though deceitfully) that D&D "began a slump in the 2000s" because late 2008 is in fact in the 2000s.

It's such a carefully crafted set of "literally true" deceitful statements that I can only assume it was written by a WotC PR person.

-Username17

infected slut princess · Sun Dec 28, 2014 5:50 pm

Someone asked me to join a 5e game. I told them to go fuck themselves and never speak to me again.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 6:01 pm

What actual evidence do we have that 3E was the best era for D&D? On OSR sites and the like, most people (perhaps unsurprisingly) seem to think the game had the most players during the early 80s. And the success of 3E was mostly to bring back people who had already played. There was apparently a poll on enworld back in the mid 00s (before 4E) that agreed with this sentiment. (Obviously, enworld cannot be considered a representative sample of gamers. But it does tend to have people who worship WotC's current flavor of D&D.)

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 11:44 pm

Well 5e does seem to be winning at least on the internet, if all the positive reviews and lack of backlash are anything to go by.

To be fair, while EnWorld and Reddit love it, GitP is currently having an edition war, minmaxboards is only interested in it to tweak new stuff, and this place actively hates it so YMMV.

I do find it interesting that none of the fans comment on the mechanics beyond them being vaguely "simpler" just like 4e was "more balanced".

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 12:00 am

@Blicero: Depends on what you mean by 'best'. If you're talking in terms of sales, you're probably looking at 2E D&D. However, 2E D&D's sales are tainted by the fact that A.) it didn't really have any significant competition at the height of its powers and started crumbling once it did B.) 3E D&D, while having fewer sales, stood up in the face of competitors.

The other criteria is genre penetration, which 1E D&D wins handily. 1E D&D's tropes and assumptions have so wormed its way into cRPGs and jRPGs that it'd be impossible to imagine the state of the industry without it. On the other hand, its dominance and subsequent touchstone status was also during a time period when it had practically no competition and the games it influenced (Wizardry, Ultima, Final Fantasy, etc.) subsequently had little-to-no competition in their fields during their antediluvian salad days.

Anyone claiming that 3E D&D was the most successful version of the edition ever has to qualify it with a bunch of caveats, while a 1E or 2E D&D fan can just say 'look at all of these 2E D&D computer adaptations!' or 'check out these tens of millions of sales, biyatch!' So if some grognard wanted to say that 1E and 2E D&D were the valedictorian rocket scientist and the megamillionaire rock star to 3E D&D's middle-of-the-road Harvard business school grad, I wouldn't contest them unless I was really feeling feisty.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 8:50 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Well 5e does seem to be winning at least on the internet, if all the positive reviews and lack of backlash are anything to go by.

To be fair, while EnWorld and Reddit love it, GitP is currently having an edition war, minmaxboards is only interested in it to tweak new stuff, and this place actively hates it so YMMV.

I do find it interesting that none of the fans comment on the mechanics beyond them being vaguely "simpler" just like 4e was "more balanced".

I honestly would not be surprised if WotC had a bunch of posters on their payroll that are advocating 5e. Or WotC employees that are doing that. It looked awfully suspicious when most pro 5e posters were registered june/july 2014 and stopped posting at around the time the MM came out. But even if you accept that all pro 5e posters are genuine, if braindead, there remains the fact that there are NO upcoming DnD 5e products.

I'm just waiting to see the shitstorm that is brewing behind corporate walls spill over.

infected slut princess · Mon Dec 29, 2014 4:52 pm

Mearls hasn't been fired yet.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 5:22 pm

I've seen at least some mention of a product intended for 2015 release:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/30188.html

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:03 pm

Has there been a review of the DMG yet?

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:19 pm

virgil wrote:Has there been a review of the DMG yet?

Not that I've seen.

Previn · Post by **Previn** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 3:27 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Well 5e does seem to be winning at least on the internet, if all the positive reviews and lack of backlash are anything to go by.

To be fair, while EnWorld and Reddit love it, GitP is currently having an edition war, minmaxboards is only interested in it to tweak new stuff, and this place actively hates it so YMMV.

I do find it interesting that none of the fans comment on the mechanics beyond them being vaguely "simpler" just like 4e was "more balanced".

Everyone has to make up their own stuff to make 5e work. It's like how everyone has their own house rules, so their game of D&D is awesome, even if 3.x/4e/3.P/5e sucks. It's hard to find bad things about your own stuff, and 5e forces you to make up a lot of that stuff, so it's going to get good reviews from the masses.

virgil wrote:I've seen at least some mention of a product intended for 2015 release:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/30188.html

So they are going the Paizo way of making money through the adventures. Unsurprising given how flimsy/delicate their rules are.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 4:22 am

CapnTthePirateG wrote:lack of backlash

Lack of backlash is actually more a sign that no one is even buying it.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 4:25 am

I must concur. My local gaming store had literally two 5E books today. It had more 3.x books than that. Hell, by pagecount it had more TORG stuff than that. More books too, but they were sourcebooks and adventures.

Ghremdal · Post by **Ghremdal** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:34 am

Either my google fu is totally off, but this is what I found:

Sasquatch game studios, the company that will produce the Elemental Evil storyline, appears to be dead in the water. Their site was last updated august 14th of this year. No mention of Elemental Evil storyline.

Also no official announcement by WotC or the SGS.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat are generally regarded as bad adventures.

The only upcoming product of 5e is the DM screen.

Anyone have any other information?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:16 am

I heard something about them manipulating amazon rank with preferential pricing? Does anyone have the details on that?

Scrivener · Post by **Scrivener** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:15 am

Ghremdal wrote:I read the pitch, and watched the video and I still have no idea what they are selling. I mean I get what they are getting at but it seems like vaporware to me.

I get the same vibe from them as I do from enthusiastic, but slightly crazy inventors who approach me claiming they broke the conservation of energy principle and if I could just help them hammer out a few equations and we will both be rich.

Maybe its not all WotC's fault for not being able to provide digital tools.

What they want is to be a kindle of adventures.

The whole goal is to set up a marketplace. They want to provide a dice roller, a chat system, PDF reader and a character sheet to get your foot in the door. It sounds like there will be an annual entrance fee of $20 to use this suite of tools.

Once you start to use this they want to sell you modules for what looks to be around $5. Since they didn't mention any rule set I'm willing to bet they want to sell you rule sets too. Likely you'll pay for pathfinder or 5e or just custom character sheets. And if you think you won't need a digital copy of the rules you're searching, think again.

The real business plan and their claim as to why they "separated" from WotC (which may have some merit to it) is Trapdoor wants to publish user generated content. They want you to put your adventure up for sale, charge $2.50, and they act like iTunes and skim half of the profit. They want half of a million not because a PDF reader that can generate random numbers is expensive, but because they want to be a digital distribution company.

Odds are the bottom line for a user (in the unlikely event this ever gets made) is you pay $20 a year, get a free core rule set, pay $5-10 for any splat books you might want, and have a sleek adventure builder it keeps nagging you to use so they might milk $1 off of your work.

Its a decent model, but Trapdoor won't be able to pull it off.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:16 am

Orion wrote:I heard something about them manipulating amazon rank with preferential pricing? Does anyone have the details on that?

The books are $30 on Amazon. They are $50 everywhere else.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:49 am

Orion wrote:
CapnTthePirateG wrote:lack of backlash
Lack of backlash is actually more a sign that no one is even buying it.

"Well you know what they say, sir: where there's no smoke, there's no fire."

-Seymour Skinner

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:34 pm

Ghremdal wrote:Either my google fu is totally off, but this is what I found:

Sasquatch game studios, the company that will produce the Elemental Evil storyline, appears to be dead in the water. Their site was last updated august 14th of this year. No mention of Elemental Evil storyline.

Also no official announcement by WotC or the SGS.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat are generally regarded as bad adventures.

The only upcoming product of 5e is the DM screen.

Anyone have any other information?

Sasquatch Studios actually updated their website on the 21st of August. But Sasquatch Studios is actually just three writers and two artists. They produced one product: a "savage" campaign setting that they made in Pathfinder and 4th edition flavors. The thing is: these three authors are Baker, Schubert, and Noonan - three former WotC employees. Mike Mearls has gotten WotC to "outsource" adventure production to effectively rehire people they've already shitcanned.

I don't think it means anything that Sasquatch Studios hasn't updated their website. They had a kickstarter campaign, and that has run its course already. They probably won't update their website until they have something else to kickstart. And if they are being hired flat out to design something for WotC, maybe they just wouldn't bother. Still, it's a bit weird that they didn't put a thing on their website announcing that they were going to make the new Elemental Evils thingy, if nothing else just to generate traffic and sell more copies of their Primeval Thule setting.

-Username17