Another new edition for Dungeons and Dragons

[Lars Porsenna]

One thing that I never see consistently mentioned when the "but the ink still works!" arguments are trotted out, is that adherence to an older edition means recruiting new players is often more difficult. So lets say you refuse to play no other edition than 1e AD&D. Bob, who has been with the group since 1979 either moves away or keels over stone dead due to old age and a severe coronary (due to Cheetoes consumption). Now you need to recruit a new player to the game, the end result being that either you hope they already play 1e, or you tell them to look at Ebay for a PHB, and good luck. For D&D this less an issue due to the amount of material that is still available on the secondary market, but in the future it will increasingly be an issue, and is far more an issue for smaller games.

 

Damon.

[Digital M@]

you are right, the "ink still works" holds true for existing groups or circles of players. New groups require newer versions. The only reason I ever played D&D is because it is easy to find players. To me it is about having a great time with other people. To me, rules are secondary if you I have a good group of player. Also, for me, the same set of rules gets dull in time as well. New versions and different games create more diversity in the game and bring in new life. Truth is I still have my old Boot Hill and Gamma World games from Jr High. If I could find players i would love to play those games, especially Boot Hill.

[Gailbraithe]

Yes, they're a business, they make and sell books.

 

And I want to sell more minis. Is that EEEEVIL?? Really?

 

There's a major component that you're overlooking though: They want to destroy the value of all the books they've already sold their customers. It's the difference between you releasing new miniatures because you want to sell me more miniatures, and you coming over to my house and melting all of my existing Reaper miniatures into slag so that I have to rebuy them all. It's a kind of sleazy business tactic, which is why it annoys so many people.

 

Actually, an even better analogy than you coming over to my house and slagging my miniatures is this: Reaper decides to stop producing miniatures in the 28mm scale and start making them in a 35mm scale. The idea being that if I want to buy the new Reaper miniatures, I have to scrap my existing collection, because my 28mm models will look scrawny and small next to the new 35mm models. So rather than release new dwarf models that offer me a chance to expand my existing collection of dwarves, you instead try to re-sell me Norg Kegbreaker in a different scale.

 

Of course Reaper can't do that - it would be market suicide. Your customers would rebel and refuse to buy your miniatures. There are plenty of other miniatures companies out there, and many of your customers buy from a wide range of vendors, so if you decided to change your scale dramatically you'd just see most of your customer base abandon ship. The pure painters, who don't game with their minis, might not be upset, but it'd still be taking a chainsaw to your customer base (and thus your profits).

 

But WOTC can do that (or at least thinks they can, Paizo's Pathfinder may have proven them wrong on that point). They can do that because the current edition of D&D has always been the most popular RPG and thus the easiest to find players for. Many people (especially GM types) prefer a system other than D&D but still play the current edition (whatever it may be) because its more fun to play D&D 4E with six people than Burning Wheel with none. It's kind of like how I'd rather not have to spend the ridiculous amounts of money Games Workshop demands from Warhammer players, but I do anyways because it's a 1000 times easier to find people to play Warhammer with than any other miniatures wargame (I'm lucky that the manager of my local GW store is kind of clueless about the history of GW and so I manage to use a lot of (frankly massively superior) Reaper minis in my Warhammer armies by claiming that they are old out-of-print Citadel figures. Shh, don't tell anyone).

 

Anyways, that is where the outrage comes from. Now, in fairness, it does seem that the splatbook model of expanding the game isn't commerically viable (or at least isn't profitable enough for WOTC's masters at HASBRO -- clearly it is viable on some level, as its the model Paizo uses and it has worked very well for them, mostly because they offer subscriptions to their supplements), but that doesn't change the fact that many people are content with the existing edition and resent having their arm twisted into re-purchasing the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual for the third or forth time. It becomes particularly aggravating when you understand that this is the new business model. Why spend hundreds of dollars investing in 5E when 6E will be coming out in 2016? It feels very much like signing up to get ripped off. And it also feels like WOTC is the 800lb gorilla getting its way by throwing its weight around.

 

But I'm not going to get upset about 5E, because I already abandoned ship with 4E, and frankly its easier to find Pathfinder players in Seattle than 4E Players, much like I expect it will be easier to find Pathfinder players than 5E players. WOTC so completely screwed the pooch with the release of 4E that I actually suspect that 5E is less an attempt to force everyone to buy new books (that was the motive of 4E) and more of an attempt to stop the massive hemmoraging of their customer base over to Paizo. But I frankly think its just too late for that. I think too many people have too much animus towards WOTC at this point to ever trust them again.

[Qwyksilver]

If you compare models from the early 2000 ranges to current models, you will see that Reaper has gradually increased in scale over the years. So the analogy doesn't really work well.

 

I still don't get the problem. I can and do still play 3.X, 4, and Pathfinder. I'll probably check out 5 as well and if I like it, will buy more, and if not, I won't. I still have all my 1st edition books too. And I use them for reference, and if someone wanted to go old school, I'd bring em out and roll up a character. A new edition doesn't mean the end of a system, it means the end of new books for that system.

 

I look forward to being able to pick up the few 4E books I haven't gotten, that I want, for cheap in the coming year.

[Baphomet69]

Gailbraithe, your post was very well stated (better than I could have said it).

 

Qwyk, the analogy still applies, just change the number. If Reaper switched over to 54mm or 15mm, the analogy would be the same.

[wildbill]

In today's corporate driven society, things like 5e, followed by 6e a few years later, are going to continue to be common. Look at what Games Workshop does with their Warhammer games. They release new versions of the rules and army books every 5 to 6 years. Yet, their fans are Legion. They just don't seem to mind. That begs the question: why is this? What is Games Workshop doing that is so fundamentally different from WotC to garner the loyalty from their players? I admit I am in the "not buying new rpg books" camp. It really boils down to dollars and lack of rpg time for me. If I a book I like cheap enough, then I'll buy it, knowing full well I won't ever use it. That's ok. I can say I have it. But, if someone can figure out what Games Workshop's magical loyalty formula is, then I guess be sure to spike my food with it.

[Heisler]

GW's customer loyalty is completely based on churning through their customer base and counting on new players coming in with each edition. They don't care whether the "old" players stay or go. They also benefit very much from having the game systems that you can count on being able to play no matter where you go, world wide. So even though I don't like it all that much I have been slowly working on a small highly converted space marine chapter so I can play it with my sons. The other side of the coin is that there is always hope that with a new edition, there will fixes to what ever rule everyone hated in the last edition. So their edition changes are not nearly as radical as when AD&D 2nd went to D&D 3.0 or going from D&D 3.5 to D&D 4.0. But, as I said, GW really does churn through their customer base at a pretty good clip.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Heisler

[Baphomet69]

Another factor for GW is that the folks who have drunk the Cool-Aid® have invested so much money already, some are loathe to abandon the game (so they spend as much again replacing obsolete stuff O.o ). Miniatures going obsolete...what a racket...

 

At least that's my theory, and I'm stckin' to it. ;)

[Gailbraithe]

If you compare models from the early 2000 ranges to current models, you will see that Reaper has gradually increased in scale over the years. So the analogy doesn't really work well.

 

That's a horse of a different color. What you say is true, but it isn't part of a master plan by Reaper to force their customers to rebuy their whole collection by suddenly and dramatically changing the product they sell. The creeping growth of miniatures is driven by a host of factors. Games Workshop is probably the biggest driver of the trend, since they started going towards "heroic scale" first (which was a deliberate strategy to make their minis incompatible with other brands), but other factors include new artists entering the field and prefering to work on a slightly larger scale (ask Tre Manor and Julie Guthrie to sculpt you a barbarian and you'll get two models that look like they are different scales, but its really just a difference between Julie's style (which skews towards hard realism) and Tre's style (which skews more towards the fantastic)), the ever growing demand for greater detail and more complex models, and (almost afraid to say this lest I start a massive flamewar) the simple fact that "25mm" was never really a scale so much as it was a rough guideline (do you enjoy being flamed? Go to the frothers.uk forums (a major hangout for prominent sculptors) and post something along the lines of "What scale is 28mm exactly?" Be sure to don fireproof underwear first, it will get heated).

 

I still don't get the problem. I can and do still play 3.X, 4, and Pathfinder. I'll probably check out 5 as well and if I like it, will buy more, and if not, I won't. I still have all my 1st edition books too. And I use them for reference, and if someone wanted to go old school, I'd bring em out and roll up a character. A new edition doesn't mean the end of a system, it means the end of new books for that system.

 

The problem is finding players for a no-longer supported system. You may not have personally experienced the problem (in which case, lucky you, you must live in a gaming mecca), but it can be a significant problem for some players in some areas.

[Gailbraithe]

Another factor for GW is that the folks who have drunk the Cool-Aid® have invested so much money already, some are loathe to abandon the game (so they spend as much again replacing obsolete stuff O.o ). Miniatures going obsolete...what a racket...

 

At least that's my theory, and I'm stckin' to it. ;)

 

I don't want to start a flame war, but after hanging out at my local GW store for the last year or so, I've started to get the feeling that GW fanboys have a lot in common with battered spouses. Of all the RPG/wargame companies that have ever existed, GW has far and way the most loathesome business practices, but the fanboys will go into the most incredible displays of cognitive dissonance to explain why GW isn't screwing them over with their polices. They defend the company, but all I hear is "He hits me because he loves me!"

[wildbill]

Here's another aspect to this debate that just came to me. Back in the day, when I was heavily into 2nd Ed, the game felt like it was a "true" role playing game. To me, 4th Ed feels like a table top skirmish game that happens to have role playing qualities to it. I might as well whip out Runebound, DungeonQuest, Hero's Quest, or any number of other similar games. At least I don't need a dedicated group to play those games!

 

That's the problem with the situation I'm in: lack of players. I totally get it that people don't want to play the old rules (THAC0 anyone? ). If WotC backs 5th Ed off from becoming a skirmish wargame and more towards a "traditional" role playing game, then I'll probably purchase the Player's Guide, DM's Guide and Monster's Manual. Maybe even the Unearthed Arcana as well. That'll be good for me!

[Baphomet69]

<whisper> Just buy Chaosium's Basic RolePlaying and Classic Fantasy...</whisper>

 

 

;)

[Heisler]

And you know its not just D&D that has gone through editions. Runequest was into its third edition within 10 years of its inception. Admittedly they were making minor tweaks rather than whole sale changes.

[Reaperbryan]

The primary difference between any given D&D Edition, and Editions such as HERO System (which is on 6th Ed), or Chaosium's CoC, is that most non D&D game editions are backwards compatible to a very large extent. D&D 1->2->3->4 has only been somewhat compatible, with compatibility being greater from 1->2, and there was a book to convert from 2->3, but converting from 3->4 required a "scrap and redraw" approach that basically only left you with the characters name and maybe race the same.

 

Even AD&D had this with AD&D Second Edition, and AD&D Second Edition Revised.

 

Linked here for your edification - DDXP had a seminar with Jeremy Crawford, Mike Mearls, and Monte Cook about "D&D Next".

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/317318-seminar-transcript-charting-course-edition-all-editions.html

and here is a person who reviewed the seminar and also her playtest game following the seminar:

http://geeksdreamgirl.com/2012/01/27/ddxp-2012-report-the-first-glimpses-at-the-new-edition-of-dungeons-dragons/

 

 

Galbraith - I'll be at PaizoCon this year again if you want to stop by and put a face to the name.

[Doug Sundseth]

And you know its not just D&D that has gone through editions. Runequest was into its third edition within 10 years of its inception. Admittedly they were making minor tweaks rather than whole sale changes.

 

With each new edition of HERO system, there were people who disliked the changes, but I didn't see the widespread hatred. And I think it's largely because the changes were mostly bug fixes and cleanups. The game runs very similarly today to the way that it ran in 1983.

 

But Heisler's mention of Runequest is interesting. RQ3 was perceived as a massive change from RQ2, and it was widely hated by RQ2 fans. See also Robin Laws's HeroQuest, which might have been even more hated.