aramis erak
Legend
Since you seem absolutely convinced that D&D should emulate Pathfinder, why are you not playing pathfinder instead?
Many of us are happy with 5E having a slow release schedule. It means we can keep up on low incomes.
D&D 5E Light release schedule: More harm than good?
- Thread starter Sailor Moon
- Start date
Since you seem absolutely convinced that D&D should emulate Pathfinder, why are you not playing pathfinder instead?
Many of us are happy with 5E having a slow release schedule. It means we can keep up on low incomes.
I play both actually.
Where is your evidence that "many of you" are happy with the slow release?
So now what? Where are you going with your argument next?
Vael
Legend
A light schedule annoys me when there's stuff that I feel that I need to really run my favourite DnD settings. So a lack of Psionics and Eberron support, and no idea when that may be coming out bothers me.
OTOH, the core set was pricey, and delivered a fair amount of content. So I don't feel a need for a wave of more books and options. And having bought a lot of 4e material that is not currently being used, I don't really feel like getting on that purchasing treadmill again.
OTOH, the core set was pricey, and delivered a fair amount of content. So I don't feel a need for a wave of more books and options. And having bought a lot of 4e material that is not currently being used, I don't really feel like getting on that purchasing treadmill again.
Jester David
Hero
I was thinking of this today and believe that there's a middle ground.
Too many RPG products is problematic. It creates rules bloat and power creep while aging the game. Rather that new content being exciting it becomes a chore.
But that does not mean there should be no priducts. WotC just needs to find other a D&D products beyond RPG splatbooks.
We're seeing more of these. Minis from WizKids, spellcards, Attack Wing, and the board game. But there could be more. Content for us dedicated gamers to spend money on that don't directly impact the RPG but can still impact play.
WotC could rerelease the Dungeon Tiles master sets again. Or revise them, perhaps giving them a thin plastic coating to make them usable with wet and dry erase markers.
I'd like to see a rerelease of 3 Dragon Ante. They could just reprint the cards, but they could revise the rules to tighten the game making it a cheap product.
(This highlights the difference in philosophy between most of WotC and the D&D team. WotC is otherwise dedicated to releasing product and letting it go out of print, then releasing a new product. That's how Magic works. D&D and other games make money by releasing a few products and keeping them in print.)
Other card products could be fun. Like a Deck of Many Things (the art is already done making this another cheap product). Initiative tracking cards would be neat. I adore my deck of Pathfinder Condition Cards, so WotC could also release those, possibly with common buffs/debuffs. Or a deck of magic items, like spellcards, so you can draw from the deck rather than rolling .
They could sell other accessories. Like character folios with blank character sheets or dice bags. Character sheets are a lane product now with printers being ubiquitous, but hard card stock folders to keep your character and campaign notes in would be fun.
It'd also be nice if WotC released a product like Pathfinder's pawns. They're such a cheap and handy alternative to minis. They could even improve on them by giving them a dash of plastic, making them wet/dry erase friendly, so you can number or name them.
There's also a tone of other merch like T-shirts, belt buckles, wallets, and stuffies. D&D has a wealth of classic monsters that could make fun small stuffed animals, like the gelatinous cube, tarrasque, owlbear, bulette, rust monster, or roper.
Non-crunch sourcebooks also work. Deities & Demigods and the Manual of the Planes can be 90% fluff and would not be detrimental to the health of the game.
Too many RPG products is problematic. It creates rules bloat and power creep while aging the game. Rather that new content being exciting it becomes a chore.
But that does not mean there should be no priducts. WotC just needs to find other a D&D products beyond RPG splatbooks.
We're seeing more of these. Minis from WizKids, spellcards, Attack Wing, and the board game. But there could be more. Content for us dedicated gamers to spend money on that don't directly impact the RPG but can still impact play.
WotC could rerelease the Dungeon Tiles master sets again. Or revise them, perhaps giving them a thin plastic coating to make them usable with wet and dry erase markers.
I'd like to see a rerelease of 3 Dragon Ante. They could just reprint the cards, but they could revise the rules to tighten the game making it a cheap product.
(This highlights the difference in philosophy between most of WotC and the D&D team. WotC is otherwise dedicated to releasing product and letting it go out of print, then releasing a new product. That's how Magic works. D&D and other games make money by releasing a few products and keeping them in print.)
Other card products could be fun. Like a Deck of Many Things (the art is already done making this another cheap product). Initiative tracking cards would be neat. I adore my deck of Pathfinder Condition Cards, so WotC could also release those, possibly with common buffs/debuffs. Or a deck of magic items, like spellcards, so you can draw from the deck rather than rolling .
They could sell other accessories. Like character folios with blank character sheets or dice bags. Character sheets are a lane product now with printers being ubiquitous, but hard card stock folders to keep your character and campaign notes in would be fun.
It'd also be nice if WotC released a product like Pathfinder's pawns. They're such a cheap and handy alternative to minis. They could even improve on them by giving them a dash of plastic, making them wet/dry erase friendly, so you can number or name them.
There's also a tone of other merch like T-shirts, belt buckles, wallets, and stuffies. D&D has a wealth of classic monsters that could make fun small stuffed animals, like the gelatinous cube, tarrasque, owlbear, bulette, rust monster, or roper.
Non-crunch sourcebooks also work. Deities & Demigods and the Manual of the Planes can be 90% fluff and would not be detrimental to the health of the game.
aramis erak
Legend
Most of the people I've played with at my FLGS are glad for it, as am I. Plus a largish number of people who've already told you off, which you seem incapable of registering. Perhaps you've put them all on ignore...
Yours is the strident chicken little voice screaming "the sky is falling."
Grainger
Explorer
I love the fact that it's a "slow" release schedule.
But hang on... Slow? We've only just had the core books out, and we already have three lengthy adventures!
Speaking personally, I don't understand why it's so hard to come up with adventure ideas. Why do we need it spoon-fed to us? We have decades now of back material we can draw on for inspiration, and the resources of the net. I'm a DM of 30 years' standing, and in my view, it has never been easier to come up with ideas for a campaign. Not only do we have more fiction easily available than ever (immediately available online, be that in the form of movies, game materials or novels) but historical information is just a few seconds' Google away (in most cases)*. Ideas for stories, traps, dungeons, cities, monsters, characters, likewise - if you need them, but really, it's not that hard if you have been exposed to any adventure fiction (books, movies etc.). RPGs are meant to be games of the imagination, not "games of I can't possibly do it without a small library of official books".**
Looking at crunch books, in my view the last thing we needs is loads of supplemental rules. There's more than enough in the core books to provide years of adventure. If you need more character races and classes to enjoy the game, then you're not thinking enough about character types, frankly. There's a near infinite world of character choice there already.
5e in its core form isn't exactly a rules-light system anyway - it's just lighter than some previous editions. Rules bloat can't be conducive to drawing in new players. The sheer number of books puts me off even considering Pathfinder. That system looks like a headache to get started with, let alone play or GM, and a potentially never-ending money sinkhole as it becomes a power creep arms-race (I don't know if this is the case with Pathfinder - I'm going on my past experience of never-ending splatbooks with GW and TSR). I admit that some of Paizos adventures look good, and I like their game aids - but the sheer number of character classes is ridiculous.
I hated the rules bloat in 2e (and history has revealed it was a blatant attempt to milk fans for more money, rather than because the game needed it - although it was pretty obvious at the time, with at least one splatbook being advertised with heavy hints that you needed the latest one to keep your character from dying, because all the other classes already had them and you'd not keep up without it!). The last thing I want to see is this kind of nonsense with 5e, and I would always be deeply suspicious of splatbooks for this reason, let alone the bloating effect they have on the game, which already has enough rules.
*Only this week, I wanted to find out more about early Norman castles (my players are going to infiltrate one), and not only found lots of information online in minutes, but found and ordered a book which will be perfect for illustrating the castle defenders. In the past, I wouldn't even have known the book existed. Instant "module" there - cost? free - not counting the book, which was inexpensive second-hand, but entirely optional.
**And to qualify this, I have a lot less time than I used to, so that's not the issue here.
But hang on... Slow? We've only just had the core books out, and we already have three lengthy adventures!
Speaking personally, I don't understand why it's so hard to come up with adventure ideas. Why do we need it spoon-fed to us? We have decades now of back material we can draw on for inspiration, and the resources of the net. I'm a DM of 30 years' standing, and in my view, it has never been easier to come up with ideas for a campaign. Not only do we have more fiction easily available than ever (immediately available online, be that in the form of movies, game materials or novels) but historical information is just a few seconds' Google away (in most cases)*. Ideas for stories, traps, dungeons, cities, monsters, characters, likewise - if you need them, but really, it's not that hard if you have been exposed to any adventure fiction (books, movies etc.). RPGs are meant to be games of the imagination, not "games of I can't possibly do it without a small library of official books".**
Looking at crunch books, in my view the last thing we needs is loads of supplemental rules. There's more than enough in the core books to provide years of adventure. If you need more character races and classes to enjoy the game, then you're not thinking enough about character types, frankly. There's a near infinite world of character choice there already.
5e in its core form isn't exactly a rules-light system anyway - it's just lighter than some previous editions. Rules bloat can't be conducive to drawing in new players. The sheer number of books puts me off even considering Pathfinder. That system looks like a headache to get started with, let alone play or GM, and a potentially never-ending money sinkhole as it becomes a power creep arms-race (I don't know if this is the case with Pathfinder - I'm going on my past experience of never-ending splatbooks with GW and TSR). I admit that some of Paizos adventures look good, and I like their game aids - but the sheer number of character classes is ridiculous.
I hated the rules bloat in 2e (and history has revealed it was a blatant attempt to milk fans for more money, rather than because the game needed it - although it was pretty obvious at the time, with at least one splatbook being advertised with heavy hints that you needed the latest one to keep your character from dying, because all the other classes already had them and you'd not keep up without it!). The last thing I want to see is this kind of nonsense with 5e, and I would always be deeply suspicious of splatbooks for this reason, let alone the bloating effect they have on the game, which already has enough rules.
*Only this week, I wanted to find out more about early Norman castles (my players are going to infiltrate one), and not only found lots of information online in minutes, but found and ordered a book which will be perfect for illustrating the castle defenders. In the past, I wouldn't even have known the book existed. Instant "module" there - cost? free - not counting the book, which was inexpensive second-hand, but entirely optional.
**And to qualify this, I have a lot less time than I used to, so that's not the issue here.
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This afternoon I went into a games shop near where I live for the first time. Most of the time I go to a much larger shop near my work, but I was in Reigate so wandered over to Redhill and Gamers' Guild.
The guy behind the counter was happy to chat and we got onto this subject. He sells this stuff (and board games and Magic cards and traditional games) for a living. He said without prompting that one of the barriers to people getting into the Pathfinder games in the room downstairs is the volume of material available and the attitude of some of the players that means that "available"="necessary", particularly if they think they can get away with an exploit they think the DM might not be aware of.
3.5 had a similar issue, from my perspective at least. What we both agreed was that the OGL helped generate a shitstorm of product that demonstrated the law of diminishing returns. That wasn't to say that there were no good modules coming out but that the quality was so variable that picking the gems out of the detritus became extremely hard to do. Not since Judges Guild was the quality so wildly random.
Controlling the volume is a choice that they have made. I'm pretty sure that Wizards probably wanted to be further down the line in the process of a formal general 3rd party agreement, the only things we have seen so far seem to be one off contracts. But until that is in place and working we won't know about it. Some of the mid to large publishers are going to have product in the pipeline they can't talk about. The smaller ones might but may not have the manpower to get the ball rolling until the ink is dry. None of this is ideal. But the alternative would have been to delay release until off site production was finalised. That would actually have helped HotDQ, but it would have pushed 5e into this year. And I doubt anyone actually would have wanted that.
The guy behind the counter was happy to chat and we got onto this subject. He sells this stuff (and board games and Magic cards and traditional games) for a living. He said without prompting that one of the barriers to people getting into the Pathfinder games in the room downstairs is the volume of material available and the attitude of some of the players that means that "available"="necessary", particularly if they think they can get away with an exploit they think the DM might not be aware of.
3.5 had a similar issue, from my perspective at least. What we both agreed was that the OGL helped generate a shitstorm of product that demonstrated the law of diminishing returns. That wasn't to say that there were no good modules coming out but that the quality was so variable that picking the gems out of the detritus became extremely hard to do. Not since Judges Guild was the quality so wildly random.
Controlling the volume is a choice that they have made. I'm pretty sure that Wizards probably wanted to be further down the line in the process of a formal general 3rd party agreement, the only things we have seen so far seem to be one off contracts. But until that is in place and working we won't know about it. Some of the mid to large publishers are going to have product in the pipeline they can't talk about. The smaller ones might but may not have the manpower to get the ball rolling until the ink is dry. None of this is ideal. But the alternative would have been to delay release until off site production was finalised. That would actually have helped HotDQ, but it would have pushed 5e into this year. And I doubt anyone actually would have wanted that.
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While out for a jog today, I devised a theory regarding 5e's release schedule and organized play program. 5e is being marketed to draw customers into game/hobby stores. Though I hear less about it now, it seems like a few years ago, game/hobby stores were really in decline, closing doors at an alarming rate. In the short time that I have lived in Prestonsburg, KY, I have seen two game/hobby stores die. The organized play program clearly rewards in store play in a way that it does not reward home play; this is a departure from previous D&D organized play programs that rewarded home and store play more equitably. The release schedule has been called slow by some. Others argue that it is not slow, that it is simply different from previous release schedules. What is true is that players of HotDQ earn a greater reward for playing in stores than at home. Store players can also more easily access Expeditions for more play experiences. As an aside, this really annoys me because, at the moment, I don't have a store at which I can enjoy these play experiences. I digress.
Anyway, to make this brief (because I am really starting to ramble), I believe that both the release schedule and the organized play program look the way they do specifically to get players into stores. But why? Yeah, there's the nebulous crap about building community, but I don't really buy it. There's not a ton of product directly related to the RPG (again that is counter to this edition's real goal-- which I am about to unveil). There are ancillary products like Attack Wing and boardgames (again, as an aside, these do nothing for me). The real reason that 5e is shaped the way that it is is because WotC wants people in games stores buying anything-- D&D, comics, snacks, table space, and especially Magic.
With 5e, I believe that WotC is doing what they can to keep brick and mortar stores in business. And despite my earlier complaining, this is a good thing. I love game stores (I wish I had one in my town). But it is not strictly altruistic. I have no idea how much money D&D makes, or Magic, but I do know that Magic is widely regarded as a cash cow. Further, I believe that Magic would be a much skinnier, poorer cow without brick and mortar stores packing people in to play on multiple nights of every week (but especially on Fridays).
So, there you have my wacky theory: D&D is a loss leader for brick and mortar stores and Magic.
Anyway, to make this brief (because I am really starting to ramble), I believe that both the release schedule and the organized play program look the way they do specifically to get players into stores. But why? Yeah, there's the nebulous crap about building community, but I don't really buy it. There's not a ton of product directly related to the RPG (again that is counter to this edition's real goal-- which I am about to unveil). There are ancillary products like Attack Wing and boardgames (again, as an aside, these do nothing for me). The real reason that 5e is shaped the way that it is is because WotC wants people in games stores buying anything-- D&D, comics, snacks, table space, and especially Magic.
With 5e, I believe that WotC is doing what they can to keep brick and mortar stores in business. And despite my earlier complaining, this is a good thing. I love game stores (I wish I had one in my town). But it is not strictly altruistic. I have no idea how much money D&D makes, or Magic, but I do know that Magic is widely regarded as a cash cow. Further, I believe that Magic would be a much skinnier, poorer cow without brick and mortar stores packing people in to play on multiple nights of every week (but especially on Fridays).
So, there you have my wacky theory: D&D is a loss leader for brick and mortar stores and Magic.
Nergal Pendragon
First Post
There is another side to this: They might be trying to keep the brick-and-mortar stores open because for DnD, that's where the profit is. The same with Magic.
One interesting thing is to see how Paizo talks about books. You know how it is Paizo offers PDFs and printed books, but does not offer a PDF subscription? On the Paizo website, Paizo employees have repeatedly talked about how PDFs would not produce enough of an income for Paizo to keep its doors open. And apparently, the brick-and-mortar stores are where Paizo gets its profit. If those brick-and-mortar stores go, it's entirely possible that WotC, Paizo, and a few other RPG companies/subsidiaries will go with them.
Told me off huh?
So the few people around here who don't agree make up the majority of gamers out there?
Your posts get more humurous by the minute.
All the gaming shops in my area contain people who don't want bloat but want more than Wizards is currently offering. Most of them aren't interested in their long AP's because they feel the Paizo ones are better.
So if you want to sling more anecdotal evidence around then I'm game all day long. I've been around this business for a long time so I do have an eye for it.
We will see what happens but I will bet you that if the schedule doesn't increase then D&D will suffer.
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