D&D General D&D's Utter Dominance Is Good or Bad Because...

[Irlo]

The food in this place is lousy, and the servings are too small!

 

[Micah Sweet]

The food in this place is lousy, and the servings are too small!

Mostly, but some items are allright, and some are exclusive to this restaurant.

 

[Remathilis]

I'm not asking anyone to lose money. Why would you think otherwise?

You have insinuated that WotC should produce material that would not be profitable as a goodwill gesture to the community. Do you believe Paizo or Kobold Press should as well?

 

[GrimCo]

Never. They're a game company. They should be making the best games they can, and making a profit doing it. You can do both things.

In theory, you can. In practice, it's more tricky.

It all comes down to good old cost benefit analysis and law of diminishing returns. In most cases, "best you can" will tip you into the area of diminishing returns or even into negative marginal returns, so it's more often than not better to put out product that's "just good enough", at least if we are looking purely from business perspective.

 

[Hussar]

So, if WotC just won't do "certain kinds of books" (whatever that means since no one has outright said what would be not-profitable-enough) AND they are making 5E everygreen AND they refuse to make and substantive changes to 5E -- what does that leave for them to publish over the next 10 years of 5E and into perpetuity? If the last 10 years are anything to go by, it looks like a lot of adventures, very few rules expansions and a few pretty controversial settings and setting/adventure hybrids. Will 5E fandom be happy with that?

Judging from the past ten years?

Yes. The fandom will be ecstatically happy with this.

 

[Hussar]

This is the perennial complaint- WotC isn’t banging out enough books per year.

This complaint has been making the rounds since 2014. You’d think that people would have gotten the memo at some point in the past decade.

WotC is not going to start doing the book a month club thing. They aren’t.

Which means as they meander from idea to idea, you will have dry spells where there aren’t books for you.

Don’t worry. At some point the pendulum will swing back towards your particular tastes.

 

[Oofta]

They don't make the kind of products I'm asking for, so we'll never know. What I do know is that your definition of "flooded" is quite a bit different from mine, and appears to consist of "anything more than we have now".

They are not flooding the market with 5E and I never said they were. Quite the opposite actually, previous editions did. Do you remember 4E's book-a-month club? Pepperidge Farm does, and so do I. Same with 3E and much of the TSR era.

 

[Oofta]

In theory, you can. In practice, it's more tricky.

It all comes down to good old cost benefit analysis and law of diminishing returns. In most cases, "best you can" will tip you into the area of diminishing returns or even into negative marginal returns, so it's more often than not better to put out product that's "just good enough", at least if we are looking purely from business perspective.

Yeah, almost like the product has broad appeal but you can't please everyone and if you try you end up pleasing no one. The people producing the product are human and are doing the best they can with the resources and knowledge they have. The fact that they haven't called me for a one-on-one consultation about what I'd personally like in the game is disappointing but understandable. Meanwhile they are making the best game they can. It's just not the best possible game for any specific individual.

 

[MerricB]

Yeah, almost like the product has broad appeal but you can't please everyone and if you try you end up pleasing no one. The people producing the product are human and are doing the best they can with the resources and knowledge they have. The fact that they haven't called me for a one-on-one consultation about what I'd personally like in the game is disappointing but understandable. Meanwhile they are making the best game they can. It's just not the best possible game for any specific individual.

Well, perhaps it is the best possible game for one person. We just don't know who that person is.

Honestly, between an incredible core game and my 3PP supplements, I'm having a fantastic time with this edition. I'm certainly not tired of it.

(Which was not the case for previous editions - I was well and ready for the changes from 1E, 2E, 3E, and 4E - even if some didn't go as well as intended.)

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Reynard]

You have insinuated that WotC should produce material that would not be profitable as a goodwill gesture to the community. Do you believe Paizo or Kobold Press should as well?

I think you have inferred that, actually. I mean, does anyone actually believe any given WotC produced book wouldn't sell?