D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[mamba]

wait, I thought this was about investment of the D&D team and creation by wotc?

yes, and if you look at my example, it shows you that the investment could very well be constant even when the list of names gets longer, so I would prefer a clearer indicator for this.

Are you talking about the DDB / VTT part? I carved those out because to me that is investing in digital more than in D&D. Not entirely unrelated, but since this was about the release schedule, it is unrelated to that at least.

 

[Parmandur]

That leaves the following options

• each one is working less, so the total is basically constant
• there is a corresponding increase in releases (there isn't, at least not that much)
• there is a lot more art in each book (maybe in the 2024 core books, we will see, but you are talking about 2022/23 books, and I do not think they had noticeably more art)
• they spend more time on it per book (not sure why they would, but not impossible)

I am not seeing 2 and 3, at least not at the pace you are suggesting. 1 is no increase, 4 would be one, there is no way to tell which of the two it is however. Maybe they have a deeper queue now and take longer per book, not sure why they would though.

In any case, I am not seeing a strong increase in releases and I am not expecting WotC to invest considerably more in one release now than in 2017 or so, but that is all speculation at best.

3 books to 5 books is nigh double, actually, so yes 1 person doing 3 books worth of work and then having co-workers in the same position 7 years later has to be more resources because they are being paid.

Kate Irwin being the only art director for 3 books in a year is a prime example of them having scant resources in 2016 compared to now, because they have more top llevelstsff she maligjt be less overworked and stretched thin. Because theybhave a higher budget.

 

[Parmandur]

yes, and if you look at my example, it shows you that the investment could very well be constant even when the list of names gets longer, so I would prefer a clearer indicator for this.

Are you talking about the DDB / VTT part? I carved those out because to me that is investing in digital more than in D&D. Not entirely unrelated, but since this was about the release schedule, it is unrelated to that at least.

If there are several times as many full time staff with the same title (Designer or Art Director are big indicators for thisntopic).we know it coats WotC more because those are paid staff...not freelancers who are paid on commission. The simple existence of more staff. The credits is complete proof that the budget is larger, unless everyone from 2016 took a pay cut and the new folks are being paid in peanuts.

For reference, here is Volo's which credits everyone on staff in 2016 as it happens, to the best if my knowledge:

And then here is Bigby Presents Credit page, which has a full list of current full time staff ("The D&D smStudio" means those who work on the game). More people is more money, hence more resources.

 

[BookTenTiger]

You don't have to tell me about 3pp; I buy and use a lot of it, and have no illusions about WotC being better than anyone else in quality. Their quality in so far as I am concerned has decreased in the last few years, which is sadly coupled with them finally releasing content for settings I actually care about and which they own. This is very frustrating to me.

Assuming people are incapable of doing simple math and understanding your product unless its absurdly simple is a separate issue.

And for the record, I never agreed to the ideas that WotC is making bad business decisions (they only want to make lots of money, and they are), or that they are leaving money on the table (at this point, I don't trust them to make content I'd want to buy).

I feel like when you use the word "assuming" you are doing two things:

1) you are ignoring the fact that WotC made this observation based on research, so it's a data-based theory, not an assumption.

2) you are assuming negative intent on behalf of the folks working at WotC, which is exactly what you accuse them of doing to their customers.

I'm just really curious about what you would do if you ran WotC. If you found, through research, that calling a supplement "PHB 2" confused potential customers... how would you do things differently?

 

[MGibster]

It's weird to have more than 540 posts to answer no.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I’ve rephrased it like three times now, but I guess I can try again… As someone who used to play a lot of magic very seriously, my perception of what an “average magic player” is was evidently distorted, compared to what Mark Rosewater meant by it, which seems to have been people who play “kitchen table Magic,” assembling decks out of whatever happens to be in their collections, which they might supplement with the occasional purchase of some booster packs or preconstructed deck or whatever.

Okay, I guess I just have trouble picturing something else to file under “casual player”.

And I’ve you rephrased it 3 times…I didn’t see that, so, sorry for repeating what had been said already.

 

[mamba]

3 books to 5 books is nigh double

If you go all the way to 2015 - 2017, then yes, those were the only years with three books only. Since then it is 4 in one, 5 in the other year, so a 50% increase over the 'anemic years'. Hope I did not miss any

2014: 6 (LMoP, PHB, MM, DMG, HotDQ, RoT)
2015: 3 (PotA, OotA, SCAG)
2016: 3 (CoS, SKT, VGtM)
2017: 3 (TftYP, ToA, XGtE)
2018: 4 (MToF, WDH, GGtR, DotMM)
2019: 5 (GoS, AcInc, DoIP, DiA, ERftLW)
2020: 4 (EGtW, MOoT, RotFM, TCoE)
2021: 5 (CKM, VRGtR, WBtW, FToD, SCoC)
2022: 4 (JTtRC, SJAiS, DoSI, SofDQ), 5 with MotM
2023: 5 (KftGV, BPGoG, PaBSO, PAitM, BoMT)

 

[mamba]

I'm just really curious about what you would do if you ran WotC. If you found, through research, that calling a supplement "PHB 2" confused potential customers... how would you do things differently?

call it PHB II?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You raised a number of good points, but I wanted to single this one out: even if the VTT does crash and burn, it won't necessarily be obvious (at least, to casual perusal). Unless it's an absolute dumpster fire in the worst possible way, which doesn't seem likely, it'll probably be more like two or three years of not living up to executive expectations rather than anything else. Much like with 4E's DDI, where even though the issues were visible up front, they weren't so bad that it wasn't able to limp along for a few years.

I think the difference is that today a lot of companies are far less tolerant of stuff "limping along" than they were 5-15 years ago.

You can see this across the entertainment media industry - videogames and TV are easy examples. TV shows, it used to be if they weren't doing great, they'd just sit there on one season, or maybe even get a second season to attempt redemption or get bought by another channel who might make more seasons. Whereas right now, a lot of shows are just getting vaulted entirely for the combination of tax right-off and lack of residuals (which is more important depends on who you ask). Videogames are getting cancelled outright - just look at Hyenas, a game that Sega and Creative Assembly spent $100m+ on, and which was essentially complete and ready for release, but will now never come out, because it's better to get the tax write-off and so on. WotC also did a sweeping cancellation of D&D-related videogame products earlier this year.

That said, I do agree that it's quite possible WotC execs will be politically invested enough in the 3D VTT that even if it's completely failing to provide the desired ROI (which seems highly likely, frankly) that they may keep it going for a couple of years just trying new things to try and make it profitable.

But yeah I don't think we'll know much about it except from investor meetings or if WotC suddenly announces it's going end-of-service or something.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I feel like when you use the word "assuming" you are doing two things:

1) you are ignoring the fact that WotC made this observation based on research, so it's a data-based theory, not an assumption.

2) you are assuming negative intent on behalf of the folks working at WotC, which is exactly what you accuse them of doing to their customers.

I'm just really curious about what you would do if you ran WotC. If you found, through research, that calling a supplement "PHB 2" confused potential customers... how would you do things differently?

The D&D I would make would likely not appeal to most modern players. It wouldn't make as much money as WotC wants or is making now, but I think it would make enough to keep the lights on, which is what I would be looking for financially.

I'd certainly spend less money on art.