WoTC

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Wilst poking around I am hearing an increasing cacophony of voices speaking disapprovingly of WoTC. While owned outright by Peter Adkinson I was under the impression that this company was the perfect partner for Dungeons and Dragons. Hats off to his efforts to strip it down to it's basic essentials and making it fan friendly to the next generation.

However, it has since been purchased by Hasbro and the direction of the company has been altered. Any thoughts on what is going on? Did I actually hear that dreaded term......4th Edition? What the hell is going on with this monster Arneson and Gygax launched?

[falstaff]

Well. Rumours about a 4th Ed. are around since the coming of 3rd or 3.5.
I think we will see a 4th Ed. in the coming years because Hasbro has to generate revenue somehow and a new Ed. is always a thing to make money on. Think the acquisition of WotC has at least helped D&D getting back into the spotlight. Better/more marketing, restructuring of Dungeon & Dragon Mag. (Paizo), and so on. Seems the market is somehow more alive than 5 years ago. At least that's what friends are saying who run hobby stores back home.
The only thing is that the advent of d20 afflicted the diversity of rpg-systems.
People tend to buy only "original" D&D stuff (it is hard to convince people buying third-party products).
Seems that most of the new stuff lacks in quality though. Talked to a friend 2 weeks back (he's deep into 3rd Ed. stuff) about the new Waterdeep Sourcebook and he says that the old Waterdeep and the North accessory had more info than the new stuff. Like Ralf always says WotC is releasing more&more products with the player in mind. So a lot of cool information that would be "DM only" isn't released at all.
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Interesting perspective. I would like to think that D&D has become more of a hot item in game shops the last couple of years without the likes of ccg's running the gamut as it were.

It took approximately 10 years between editions from 1st through 3rd and 5 years for the latest incarnation. I am very leary about the idea of creating another edition just to sell more core books. I think this will drive many more people away from the hobby than to it.

[Ralf Toth]

Fal is correct. The core books were the products that always earned TSR/WOTC the most money. That fact was confirmed by Ryan Dancey et al.

So, for a manager, it must be logical to re-release the core products in shorter intervals. And it is not a bad idea! If I understand correctly, the 3.5 was released as an optional update to 3.0, meaning, you can use all the products for 3.5 with 3.0 core rulebooks. I am not sure, tho. If so, there is no reason for a fan to turn away.

If they release 4.0 as a new standard now (2005), this would come too early. If they do it in three years from now, this would be better timing, IMO.
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[falstaff]

Think it will take at least 2 more years until we see a new Ed.
3.5 was a clear ripp-off. WotC didn't even provide a online errata for those who already bought 3.0.
All new books are 3.5 and it takes time to re-do all changes to be a book/module fully compatible.
Anyway. If you are on the lookout for a new Ed. try Monte Cook's stuff.
Arcana Evolved and Iron Heros sound/look great. In my opinion the best D20 stuff around.
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[Ralf Toth]

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Yes. There was this conversion booklet (think you can still download it somewhere) that stated something like this "we did a lot of changes. this booklet lets you know 3 of about 60 things we altered. if you want to know more please buy the books".
They re-release all the other books now with 3.5 standard like the psionics hardcover and so on.
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I think this is exactly why a big corporation CANNOT own the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. They will look for ways to specifically and exclusively horn the pockets of their fanbase and that is pretty much it. Even if it requires doing funky stuff like selling 'new' rules as opposed to providing quality gaming developments. Then...when the sales fall flat....they will not hesitate to summarily dump the franchise. But wait! Dont think they will sell it off to someone for a fraction of what they purchased it for from Adkinson. They will just sit on the copyright/trademarks and DO NOTHING with it in hopes that it will generate enough interest down the road to become more valuable for selling the rights again.

[falstaff]

Think that is why they done this trick offering the d20 license for free. The community and small publishers will provide the quality stuff. That is what it seems to my right now. Who would have thought about releasing the Castle Zagyg stuff from Gygax like Trolllord is doing right now. Or the Necromancer Games modules ("3rd Ed. rules & 1st Ed. feel" is their slogan) and guys like Monte Cook who produces a lot of quality stuff.
What they need right now is a proper movie, tv show or good videogame and not the kinda crap they produced in the past few years to keep the franchise going.
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Hats off to Adkinson though. He showed tremendous vision in stripping down the AD&D system into a more simplified format (at least it seems to be a bit simpler). If not at least it is nostalgic in flavor with a new look to it.

The d20 was also a very smart concept. Let the hungrier game companies produce the high research and development - low profit items for the game system. This move as much as anything breathed enough life into the franchise to carry it this far.

However, I blame Adkinson for cashing out by selling it to Hasbro. In the end, I am afraid we will have to applaud him for lifting it out of its morass and blame him for burying it for good in the interest of a dollar.

[falstaff]

here is a scoop from the enworld boards.
it's rather long but maybe interesting:

here's a very interesting (and long!) thread on the messageboards entitled "The Market Dying?. In it, people are discussing whether or not the RPG industry is shrinking - and to what extent. Various people from publishing companies have weighed in (including Mike Mearls from WotC, Chris Pramas from Green Ronin and Matt Sprange from Mongoose). Here I'll try and pull out some of the interesting posts - please bear in mind that I'm not trying to offer an opinion here, I'm just quoting posts which caught my attention:

Mike Mearls, Associate Developer, RPG R&D, WotC - When we talk about the RPG industry, we're really talking about three industries (D&D, d20, non-d20) that exist under the umbrella of a larger marketplace that includes TCGs, CMGs, metal miniatures, boardgames, and geek culture items (stuffed Cthulhu dolls, t-shirts, etc.)

Part of the problem in getting any broad picture or one sentence summaries of how things are going is that all of these industries can shoot off in different directions at the same time.

D&D is doing fine. I can't even begin to get into details here, since I hear stuff around the office that is confidential. Basically, if we pay a firm to do market research we can't just go around reporting their results. That's money we've invested in acquiring data that we use to form D&D's strategy. But what I can say is that D&D is trucking along fine.

I think the big problems lie in the d20 and non-d20 segments. The current distribution and retail system is poorly suited for RPGs. Since 1993, the hobby game distributors and stores have enjoyed a steady stream of high sales, fad products: Magic, the TCG explosion, Pokemon, Heroclix, D&D 3e and d20, Yu-Gi-Oh. All of these games were cash cows. The distributors simply shifted fad products from publishers to retailers and soaked up the profits. The retailers put the latest fad on the shelf, and gamers bought it in droves.

Those days are over. Yu-Gi-Oh is no longer a fad, and nothing has arisen to take its place. I think this is why RPGs are feeling the pinch: the distributors simply don't want to deal with them anymore. RPGs have lots of different titles, making them hard to track, and they don't move as many raw numbers as a CCG or TCG. Even boardgames have a leg up on RPGs, as most games cost around $50. With money tight, RPGs are the first ones to go.

To really sell RPGs, you have to have some level of expertise in them. If you don't understand the RPG market and keep track of what's hot, it's a mindfield. How many times have you seen a game store with an entire shelf of dead Fast Forward d20 products? A game store owner would have to be a reasonably sophistacted D&D player to understand that FF product was terrible. He'd also have to do a fair amount of work to track his inventory to the level that he can see that FF titles didn't sell.

The typical well-stocked RPG section has maybe a dozen game lines, if not more, with dozens of titles for each. Compared that to the TCG section. A store might carry 6 or 7 different games, each with the current base set, and maybe three or four expansion sets currently in stock. Same thing from CMGs; you have far fewer lines, and each line consists of far fewer products.

(To put it another way, the D&D minis line has generated 7 products over the past three years: Harbinger, Dragoneye, Archfiends, Giants of Legend, Aberrations, Deathknell, and Angelfire. Compare that the number of D&D books released since then - there's about 30 titles. For collectable minis games, there's HeroClix and D&D. For RPGs, a store might carry D&D, WoD, GURPS, Hero, Warhammer FRP, d20 stuff, Conan, AU, IH, BR, TW, BC, and tons of others. For both distributors and retailers, RPGs are *much* harder to track and handle than other types of games.)

RPGs also suffer in that they're much harder to demo than a minis or card game, they lack the cool, compelling "toy" factor you get with minis and boardgames, and they don't lend themselves to tournaments as easily as other games.

We also have seen a big die off in game retailers, probably attributable to the evaporation of an easy money maker a la Pokemon. That puts a huge dent into the number of stores ordering RPGs, and thus cuts down sales.

The hobby game market as a whole has also seen a downturn. Again, I think this is attributable to the shrinking pool of retailers.

I think we're seeing more and more D&D sales pushed into bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. In the past few years, D&D has made its way on to a lot more B&N shelves. I've also seen several stores with rotating, stand up displays filled with D&D books. If you think about it, D&D makes huge sense for these places. A single D&D book goes for about $30, and you can fit the entire line in one, maybe two shelves. On a shelf inch/dollar basis, that's a lot of cash value stuck in a relatively small area. Best of all for a bookstore, if you establish a good presence, you can generate a lot of return sales as gamers start shopping at a bookstore rather than a game store.

In terms of infrastructure, the book trade is designed to handle RPGs - look at how many new books come out each week. Tracking all those titles is a lot easier for a national chain than for a single, small business.

GenCon sales were also strong this year, and the show's attendance went up. I think this is evidence that we're looking at problems with distributors and retailers, rather than a drop in demand for games.

For RPGs, and D&D in particular, I think a lot of that demand is now being met by chain bookstores. This is why I never paid any attention to Ken Hite's analysis. The data was terrible, and it did nothing to account for book stores. I think access to the book trade is the key line between success and failure in today's RPG market.

Chris Pramas, President, Green Ronin Publishing - The industry has always gone through boom and bust cycles. And make no mistake, this is an industry-wide problem, not specific to RPGs (though they are the segment that seems hit the hardest). Right now we are going through a rough patch and that goes for everyone--WotC included. All indicators point to this. That doesn't mean the game industry is dying but things sure could be more healthy.

Chris Pramas on why actual figures aren't being cited - If there were reliable figures, people would post them, but one of the long term problems of the game industry is that such figures don't exist. Most companies are privately held and they don't share their sales information. Many retailers don't have POS systems and the ones that do have no mechanism to share their numbers. So we are left with the sales numbers we do know (our own), imperfect info like the Comics and Games Retailer numbers, and what evidence can be gathered from the other tiers (retailers and distributors). It doesn't create a slick report full of citations that can be posted and analyzed, but it is possible to discover and understand certain trends in the industry. And when you are hearing the same thing from 99% of your sources, it doesn't take a genius to draw the correct conclusion. Again, let me stress that I would not say the industry is dying. That's just hyperbole.

Mike Mearls - I think a bigger and more interesting question is, "Will technology ever kill off tabletop gaming?"

I don't think it will. If it was going to, it would've done so already. We've had computer RPGs since 1981. We've had MMORPGs since 1997. I think we're already at the point where a computer interface makes it easier to manage the game and prettier to look at. Short of some radical, singularity-level change in technology, I think RPGs are too social in nature for a computer interface to replace them. As long as people like to interact face to face, I don't see RPGs as a form going anywhere.

But here's the catch.

The big "secret" of RPG publishing is that gamers don't need us. At all. RPGs are designed for the participants to act as game designers. IMO, RPG books are a real tough sell to gamers. Unless a publisher does a bang up job on a book, gamers just won't bother. They'll stick to their homebrew material, thank-you-very-much.

The challenge to an RPG publisher is to make products that grab gamer's attention and follow up with great rules, good writing, excellent layout, and cool art. If I've learned anything since I started on this crazy career path, it's that gamers are merciless when it comes to quality. There might be plenty of puff piece reviews for a book, and tons of "buzz", but when it comes down to sales, bad products are road kill.

At GenCon, I described my job like this: picture two 10 ton blocks of stone. On one side, you have every single DM in the world pulling on a block. On the other side, you have the 22 full-time RPG staff members at WotC. We, the WotC staff, are in a race to pull that block faster and farther than our entire customer base. If we slip behind, we're irrelevant. We're screwed. We're TSR circa 1996.

I think it's completely possible for game publishers to slide into oblivion, even while more gamers than ever play RPGs. I think that's part of why I love my job. We can't half-ass it if we want to stay relevant. As soon as an RPG designer stops looking at what gamers want, how gamers play, and how he can make his designs more fun, he's irrelevant.

The good side of this situation is that, once you decode what gamers want, they'll stampede book and gaming stores to buy it. Look at how low D&D dropped when TSR was dying. Dragon and Dungeon stopped publishing. There weren't any new books for months. GenCon was almost canceled. And yet, within 3 years a new edition of D&D hit the scene, blew out sales records, and ushered in a new golden age.

I think D&D is a hell of a lot tougher to kill than anyone can imagine.

Chris Pramas on the 4 million people playing D&D - Yep, and that sounds great until you realize the other "dirty secret" of D&D: only a fraction of those 4 million buy any D&D products. If even 5% of those people bought every D&D release, the D&D business would be frickin' great. If 10% did, it'd be utterly fantastic. They don't though and that's the rub. Many players don't even buy a current PHB and a fair number are still playing with the same old edition books they've had for 10 or 20 years.

For the sake of comparison, let's look at World of Warcraft, which has over 4 million world wide subscribers, each one of whom pays monthly to play. Quite a difference to the bottom line.

Gareth Michael Skarka, Adamant Entertainment, shares some figures - Just to give non-industry folks a glimpse at the reports that we see:

The September 2005 issue of COMICS & GAMES RETAILER contains sales reports as of June 2005. Now, admittedly, these numbers are flawed, since they are a self-selecting survey. However, they are the only numbers we have, and are useful for extrapolating larger trends.

C&GR averages reported figures across all stores in the sample to show a raw per-store average number of units sold of each RPG product line.

In June of 2005, the average store reporting sold at least 32 units for the month (i.e. 32 individual RPG products, for the entire month), for an average gross revenue of $850.

For the month.

Average unit sales for the entirety of 2004 hovered around the mid-70 mark. In October of 2004, they rose to a nearly-respectable 119 units. Since then however:

October 2004: 119 units
November 2004: 90 units
December 2004: 102 units
January 2005: 82 units
February 2005: 70 units
March 2005: 69 units
April 2005: 40 units
May 2005: 35 units
June 2005: 32 units

That's a massive drop. Yes, it's coming from stores that are volunteering the info...but then again, the participating stores represent some of those that are most serious about the business, and so can reasonably be assumed to represent AT LEAST the average, if not an example of a superior store.

Things are hurtin', kids. No lie.

Matt Sprange, Mongoose Publishing, gives his perspective - Hi guys,

I acknowledge in advance that I may regret stepping into this one

I'll try to give some figures where I can (and I'll be general where I deem it wise - your call whether you want to believe me or not ) but remember that I speak only for my corner of the industry. My credentials are that I run an RPG company, I watch sales daily, track them against costs and compare them with past performance to work out how to steer the company a month, six months, a year, or further from now. I have managed to do this for more than four years now, with at least a degree of success.

A lot of people have weighed in on this thread already and some know what they are talking about. However, keep in mind that people have a natural tendency to seem as if they know more than they really do (particularly in this industry, draw your own conclusions as to why), so apply filters where you feel necessary (and feel free to include this post!). That said, a PDF publisher is unlikely to know a great deal about the paper publishing side of the industry. An employee of a company is not going to have the same handle on things that his boss does, no matter how many meetings there are (no offence intended here, Mr Mearls, keep up the good work). A freelance writer, no matter how many 'contacts' they do or do not have, is _really_ on the outside of things. But I guess most of you figured all that out already.

People talk about shrinking print runs as an indication of an industry failing - and it is worth keeping in mind that even a shrunken print run can be over printed. The number 10,000 keeps getting cited as a bastion for 'real' success these days. So, looking at Mongoose, let's start by ignoring the likes of the Slayer's Guides and the Quintessentials - they were released during the d20 boom days and so cannot be representative, right? Well, we have other titles that have shot past the 10,000 mark, starting with Babylon 5. But then, that kind of tailed in with the d20 boom days too. There is Conan, of course, but let's call that fluke. Paranoia, but let's call that a foregone conclusion. We also have Starship Troopers, released just a short while ago - and that is where things start to get a bit hazy, you see. We'll come back to this.

Let's look at employment figures. In the past 12 months, Mongoose has roughly doubled its full-time, permanent staff members. Not too impressive if we had just one guy working for us last year, true. However, today we currently have 22 people employed at Mongoose. A healthy proportion of the increase has been from our expansion into miniatures but the RPG department has increased in staff as well, following a restructuring and, wait for it - increased demand. It is also worth bearing in mind that Mongoose has not borrowed any money to move into miniatures production, even though we needed to fund production of not one but seven plastic kits (currently on sale - more out this year). The entire investment came from RPG revenue. I would have to tot all those figures up but off the top of my head, the Starship Troopers miniatures game has required an investment of over half a million Dollars. That is RPG money.

Worth talking about revenue, of course - the lifeblood of any business. For reasons of competition, I don't want to go into actual figures here (though it is likely that any switched on competitor already has a pretty good idea of what our turnover is - I'll come back to that) but I can give you statistics. Mongoose's total revenue over the past 12 months has increased something like 120% over the preceding 12 months. Mongoose's total revenue from RPGs alone has increased by something like a third. Our forecasts show no slowdown in the RPG sector as we move into 2006, spearheaded as it is with two large game releases (one of which is RuneQuest). We also know that our revenue in April (an odd month to pick, but I have figures to immediate hand for it) was greater than the total revenue for the past 12 months of another well known RPG company (no, not WotC or White Wolf ).

That brings another point into play. There is a lot of talk about figures for this industry and their general untrustworthiness. You can believe that. However, there _are_ figures which _are_ solid. They are just not made public For example, we know the turnovers of most other publishers (those who sell above a certain threshold, at least) with an error margin of around 10% - and you might appreciate that this is information that company owners do not want thrown about. However, it is not rocket science and I imagine that the top five publishers (at least) have this information too. For all the good it does. However, it is nice (or, at least, interesting) to know how your own efforts stack up among your peers and, over time, you can get a sense of the industry as an (almost) whole.

So, back to the original question - is the industry (or, rather, its customer base) shrinking? The answer is a conditional yes. At this precise moment, it is. But it is not a) going to shrivel and die any time soon and b) it is not shrinking as quickly or as much as some would have you believe. That said, I have never seen this industry in a truly static condition. As with individual companies, it either goes forwards or backwards, it never stands still. There have certainly been enough recent successes (Vampire, Warhammer, yes, even Starship Troopers) to keep it burbling along until the next Big One comes. Maybe that will be RuneQuest (he said, I hope). Maybe Mr Pramas will get to write the 40k RPG (I believe that will be MASSIVE, though it might not necessarily help the RPG industry directly in the long term - but I'll be first in line). And there is always 4e

I am not surprised to see some publishers in trouble. Some have made some massive errors in their business decisions lately (I won't go into specifics on that - the rumours you hear will probably be more fun). Others have been publishing the wrong titles, running their subject material as if it were still the d20 boom days. Ultimately, I believe (with some evidence of sales to back me up, I feel) that if you publish the right books, people will come.

Remember, all of this is just my own ramblings and I can already see some things I meant to talk about left out - but this post is too long already, I fear. It is accurate, but only from my perspective. It is entirely possible the guys running WotC and WW know something I don't about how the industry will change over the next year or so I imagine a few feathers may be ruffled by all of this but other publishers do not (directly) keep us in business - you chaps do. I'll be as open as I can with you.

Oh, and I am going to presume the talk of wargaming decline was about boardgame-based wargames - the miniatures industry is very healthy right now, yes, even the historical side is showing promise.

Ah, and another thing - never write off Kevin from Palladium. That guy knows what he is doing

(Hoping that last one is not a Murray Walker).
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[Ralf Toth]

Thanks for this excerpt. It is pretty interesting, especially for me, who is not plugged to the current rpg scene.

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I will one up you guys and suggest that online role playing is becoming exceedingly sophisticated in comparison to pen and paper. The programs are becoming more sophisticated and fluid to mimick the real creative experience developing scenerios within ones mind. Couple all this with that fact that you can find people online with your exact same interest in gaming and this wraps up why pen and paper games are gonna be long duck gone in the future.

[falstaff]

I played a few of this online RPGs and I have to say they are far from a good pen&paper expierence. The only game currently available that supports some decent non-combat interaction is StarWarsGalaxies. And even though the game supports that level of interaction is is seldom used and only buy players that are branded as "hardcore rpg players" by the masses that populate the online world.
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[falstaff]

And if you want to ask Gary about some history or his current stuff:
enworld.org/showthread.php?postid=2122170#poststop

Garys Q&A part IX ... a lot of TSR history in the earlier threads.
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