Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Looking Forward


In the old-school blogosphere, we tend to devote a lot of energy looking backwards, deciphering the often "lost art" of old-school gaming, and bringing that energy to our contemporary game tables. I, at least, often forget (or just don't care) that our hobby continues on. Not, all that often, as I would like it to, but it continues nonetheless.

The picture above is from a local museum which has a large exhibit going about video games and their history. The most popular cooperative online game being WoW, they devoted a window to its history and inspiration, and there sits a old original D&D boxed set!

Recently, Bill Slavicsek has "left" his post as lead R&D for D&D after twenty years with TSR and WotC. This, inevitably, has started a flurry of speculation that "5E D&D" now looms on the horizon (as if Bill was somehow standing in the way of that, like Gandalf on the bridge in Khazad-dum).

I have to admit, it is fun to speculate, sometimes, on what a possible 5E could look like. If I had my way, it would be a sort of "D&D Classic" somewhere along the lines of the rules mechanics of B/X with all the flavor and options of 1E.

That, of course, will never happen.

Simply because the hobby is not popular enough anymore to support a company on the sales of single (or even triple) rulebooks alone. If the hobby shrinks to a tenth of its former fan base, the financial solution is apparently to try and sell ten books to every customer instead of one. If it shrinks to a hundredth, well...

4E and 3E (or Pathfinder, as it is now called heh) are brilliant money makers! Where once a DM bought a book and an adventure and players developed their characters according to ingame development, 4E and 3E characters are "builds". This means they are a framework that players can hang all kinds of compartmentalized options off of. Like a christmas tree. Actually, more like an iPhone, because few of those cool "apps" you want your character to have are free - you must buy splatbooks to get them all.

Some of you may be surprised I've included Pathfinder in the above observation; they have a reputation as "the People's Game". But I offer you the "Advanced Players Guide" and the new Arcane characters splat, and the forthcoming Martial characters splat and so on. A recent Paizo adventure I flipped through described a monster, instead of with a stat block, as "Bestiary 2 pg.33". Not even the successive monster books are optional! You must purchase everything to "fully experience" the game.

Now, please don' t take this as an indictment of 4E or 3E - lots of people love playing these, I've enjoyed them both myself. My point, as in the title of this post, is Looking Forward. My point, is that, in most ways, RPG development in the future will continue to be largely revenue-motivated, with actual play experience taking a back seat to financial concerns. Like WoW, we will always be able to trace a game's "roots" back to the original boxed set of D&D, but I suspect future products will resemble that game less and less as the years go by, as opposed to more.

What do you think?

17 comments:

  1. " ...but I suspect future products will resemble that game less and less as the years go by, as opposed to more."

    Not the products I buy. :)

    I don't want to see the "industry" collapse, but if it does, we grass roots hobbyists will carry on, just fine.

    And I'd enjoy watching a bunch of "New School" DIY'ers, follow the trail we're blazing.

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  2. We have got a lot of discussions about this topic on the OSRItalia forum during the last few days. Honestly, I think that Hasbro is unlikely to try again with D&D after the "4e incident".

    Looking foreword to GenCon to see what will happen, anyway.

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  3. There is a huge trend lately of rebooting franchises, I.P.'s, classic movie series and video games. Re envisioning just what the spirit of the subject is. They use classic titles, sometimes even just the original, such as the new Mortal Kombat (actually Mortal Kombat 9).

    I could see Wizards releasing a version of D&D that is simply called Dungeons & Dragons, hyping it up as the "classic experience." With more and more franchises reverting to their roots, I could see Wizards doing this. Maybe not a full blown edition, more of a spin-off or standalone without too many supplements.

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  4. Great post, nothing much to add but I will say that if WOTC puts out a 5th ed so soon after the 4th ed fiasco, then I think they'll doom the "brand".

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  5. See, that's the thing James. We don't need the industry anymore.

    Virtually anything someone can say we need them for is non-essential. We can soldier on.

    Look at the magazine concept for example. Not only are there some damn fine zines being published right now but when you look at blogging as a 21st century version of the fanzine and with comments it becomes the old 'round robin' concept the mass is huge.

    I think the 'industry' is finished and I'm so glad. When it caved in the 90's I left tabletop behind. It is the OSR and the Indie movements that brought me back. And I'm not interested in just keeping the status quo. I live in a college town. 4 colleges to be exact. And I don't talk about what I'm working on most of the time due to time constraints (I can post about it or do it...not both) but my whole aim is to grow the base. If that means turning them on to free stuff, great. And some might become interested in a low cost system. Excellent.

    The quality of the work keeps rising out here. Wouldn't it be funny if all these people that keep leaving the 'industry' that we have respect for caught on to what we are doing and joined us?

    Now, that my friend, is the ultimate last laugh. :)

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  6. I have a gigantic stack of rpg books back to Holmes. But if the industry imploded, I have the only 3 books I need to run games til the cows come home--PHB, DMG, MM, or I could strip it even closer to the bone and run b/x out of moldvay/cook, or Mentzer. Love having a million modules and more recent iterations, but none are neccessary, not even close. Hell, I just keep a few charts for mechanical processes and an encounter key and a map on a couple of pieces of paper and roll with that. We don't even crack a book except to check spell or magical item descriptions 99% of games.

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  7. 4e did not sell well. 5e will happen when Hasbro licenses the IP to a mildly interested third party, which will then produce a run-of-the-mill fantasy heartbreaker.

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  8. Personally, I liked to see D&D 'go away'...then it will all be 'old school'. ; )

    I agree, Hasbro isn't likely to do a 5e, but they already have their next business plan in place: the boardgames (...Ravenloft, ...Ashardalon, forthcoming 'Drizzt', and the new 'Dungeon of Dread' which mentions a player taking on the role of the Dungeon Master-where have I heard that before?) They only wanted the IP, anyway, yeah?

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  9. That Bestiary 2 monster is available for free online as part of the Pathfinder Reference Document at paizo.com, btw.

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  10. @James "And I'd enjoy watching a bunch of "New School" DIY'ers, follow the trail we're blazing"

    I do wonder if there will be 4E 'retroclones' sometime in the future.

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  11. @Ambient Dust "I could see Wizards releasing a version of D&D that is simply called Dungeons & Dragons, hyping it up as the "classic experience.""

    I am surprised we haven't seen a "Classic D&D" vanity product from Hasbro yet, especially given all the other "classic" versions of boardgames I see lately from various companies. I got a "classic" Risk set with wooden blocks a year or so ago, for instance.

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  12. @lemuriapress "That Bestiary 2 monster is available for free online as part of the Pathfinder Reference Document at paizo.com, btw."

    Ok, I guess you've got me there Erik!I'm still mad about the Arcane splat though ;) Use executive veto to make sure there aren't any AoO's in the Pathfinder Basic Set, and we'll call it even (nudge nudge)...

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  13. There are no attacks of opportunity in the Beginner Box.

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  14. Technically you could run Pathfinder from the reference document (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/) which does have one of the coolest monster makers I have ever seen. That said, I enjoyed Pathfinder more when it was more easily run with the core a bestiary or two although I thumbed through the Gamemastery Guide and found it to be one of the most useless rpg books ever made.

    And all of that said, I still prefer oldschool rpgs, but sometimes you need to compromise with the group.

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  15. "4E and 3E (or Pathfinder, as it is now called heh) are brilliant money makers! "

    I don't think they are very brilliant money makers at all. I think they are desperate grabs at revenue from a dying business plan. It is possible that the best thing that could happen would be the collapse of that business plan entirely so a new crop of innovative creatives can fill the vacuum left behind with fresh new ideas and products.

    I think Burning Wheel (and Mouseguard RPG in particular) are brilliant glimpses into the future of the pen & paper RPG "industry" And of course the OSR in general.

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  16. Simply because the hobby is not popular enough anymore to support a company on the sales of single (or even triple) rulebooks alone.

    D&D has never been the primary breadwinner at Wizards. It doesn’t need to support the company.

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