Quote from: Daztur;1061633Well the balance is worse in 3ed than in any other edition. However, a lot depends on people playing the game with the sort of tactics that the system rewards. If the wizard sticks to blasting and the cleric mostly hangs back and heals in combat a lot of issues never come up. But all it takes to break the game is for wizards and clerics to use the good spells in the PHB instead of the sucky ones, no real minmaxing needed.

Are you talking about 3e or 5e? In 3e if the Wizard & Cleric use their traditional spells like Fireball & Heal then it's not too unbalanced vs the Fighter & Rogue in a typical dungeon exploration campaign. Blast magic especially sucks in 3e.

In 5e blasty magic is pretty decent again, but yes there are more powerful options like animating swarms of tiny objects, or Contagion - slimy doom, or Hypnotic Pattern, or (sometimes) Banishment. GMing for optimising spellcasters at double digit levels in 5e the system creaks a bit; IME nothing like as bad as 3e/PF though.

Quote from: Daztur;1061633Yeah, in retrospect it's hard to remember just how much "wheeeee, I can be a dwarf monk" felt like a game change But it did.

Its rather sad players felt they had to wait until D&D gave that to them.

GURPS, Fantasy Hero, Palladium Fantasy had "been there, done that" for over a decade before 3e.

Quote from: Haffrung;1061372A big part of Pathfinder's appeal is their adventure paths. They've managed to create a lot of iconic campaigns that people want to be part of, and their AP subscribers form the foundation of their business model. The question is if Paizo's APs can continue to generate buzz and FOMO in a geeksphere where WotC/5E has come to dominate with live play and streaming?

Good question. I think Paizo has WOTC beat there for sheer number of modules out. Though WOTCs modules so far are all more like three or four linked modules to form one grand campaign.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;10616105e is not done yet. They haven't put out the Psionics system yet.

Yep, that's a great way to make sure it's done for...

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1061608How many Savage Worlds books have ever made the Amazon top 100? Top 500? Top 1000? You cannot draw lessons about mainstream success from the dynamics of tiny, niche markets. It's like trying to learn about the ocean by looking at a goldfish bowl.



How many official books came out for 3.5 last year?

These aren't logical counter points. How Savage Worlds releases tons of books and side-steps the added complexity issue is independent of its popularity. Though if we are being completely honest, D&D itself is a niche market, so your comments make even less sense in that light. To put D&D in perspective, Monopoly sells about 1.5 million copies each year (I took the 30 billion printed fake money per year divided by the amount each box starts with)

One problem with 3e is that it has enough content that some people just never stopped playing. Those people are now lost to the RPG market.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1061655These aren't logical counter points. How Savage Worlds releases tons of books and side-steps the added complexity issue is independent of its popularity.

Savage Worlds sidesteps the issue of complexity leading to poor sales by never having high sales to begin with.

QuoteThough if we are being completely honest, D&D itself is a niche market, so your comments make even less sense in that light. To put D&D in perspective, Monopoly sells about 1.5 million copies each year (I took the 30 billion printed fake money per year divided by the amount each box starts with)

This would be relevant if I was saying Monopoly could maintain its sales level by being more like D&D, but I'm not. SW is tiny relative to D&D, and you can't really learn a lot of business lessons for your product from somebody whose sales are O(1%) of yours. You're basically asking why can't D&D sell a half million or more books a year on a model that sells maybe a couple thousand (hundred?) books a year for another company. The answer is in the question. It's, "because that model doesn't get you past maybe a few hundred books a year."

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1061660Savage Worlds sidesteps the issue of complexity leading to poor sales by never having high sales to begin with.



This would be relevant if I was saying Monopoly could maintain its sales level by being more like D&D, but I'm not. SW is tiny relative to D&D, and you can't really learn a lot of business lessons for your product from somebody whose sales are O(1%) of yours. You're basically asking why can't D&D sell a half million or more books a year on a model that sells maybe a few hundred books a year for another company. The answer is in the question. It's, "because that model doesn't get you past maybe a few hundred books a year."

The fallacy of this is you are assuming that D&D succeeds by virtue of it's mechanics, design, and release model. Which is laughable, since of those 3, WotC D&D is only excellent in the industry in terms of pretty books. Grognards, inertia, and marketing keep D&D on top, if it wasn't such a weird niche hobby, the actual quality of RPG games might matter. Even 4e was a wild success by RPG standards and it lost more Grognards than any edition.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1061655One problem with 3e is that it has enough content that some people just never stopped playing. Those people are now lost to the RPG market.

Possibility: 5E's focus on adventure content helps it a) maintain accessibility, b) provide plenty of content for people to use, but c) reduce the tools for people creating their own content, thus keeping them in the market.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1061667Possibility: 5E's focus on adventure content helps it a) maintain accessibility, b) provide plenty of content for people to use, but c) reduce the tools for people creating their own content, thus keeping them in the market.

5e's design of really great early levels, convincing players they do not need expensive crunch for everything, and getting DMs comfortable with making rulings help keep them in the RPG market if not in 5e itself.

Very few RPGs can afford to go as crunch heavy as 3e D&D (even PF2e/Starfinder is just a lot of boring cheaply produced crunch), so there is really no where for those fans to go aside from other D&D or D&D clones. 5e craps out before magic gets really interesting and before that level of interesting magic becomes expected so there is a vast sea of RPGs that can scratch the same itch as 5e that would be unpalatable to 3e players.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1061667Possibility: 5E's focus on adventure content helps it a) maintain accessibility, b) provide plenty of content for people to use, but c) reduce the tools for people creating their own content, thus keeping them in the market.

The thing about adventures is they're consumable goods, while rules are durable goods. People do not like buying new durable goods. They want whatever they bought to last as long as possible, either until it becomes too unstylish or eclipsed by better technology. People do not like buying new computers; they like playing new computer games. People do not like buying new media players; they like watching new movies and shows.

People do not like learning new rule sets; they like playing new adventures.

The thing the RPG industry (esp D&D) has always been really stupid about is treating rule books like consumables. They expected the average customer to be excited about adding new rules to the existing system, then, once he got tired of learning new rules for that system, to be happy to switch to an all-new system and keep adding rules to that. They did this to chase revenue instead of customers, and it always bit them in the behind in the end. Learning rules is actually this inconvenience you go through to get to the fun of having adventures with your friends.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1061686The thing the RPG industry (esp D&D) has always been really stupid about is treating rule books like consumables. They expected the average customer to be excited about adding new rules to the existing system, then, once he got tired of learning new rules for that system, to be happy to switch to an all-new system and keep adding rules to that. They did this to chase revenue instead of customers, and it always bit them in the behind in the end. Learning rules is actually this inconvenience you go through to get to the fun of having adventures with your friends.

Well maybe if people didn't share your opinion that since D&D is popular, what it does is what makes it popular, they wouldn't follow along on the same trend.

Plenty of systems haven't changed the basics since they started and keep printing new material on the regular.

I know you do not think there is anything to learn from these "lesser publishers", but the problems you lament have already been solved multiple times over.

I do agree, people hate learning new rules. It's why I prefer generics over things like D&D. From Fudge to GURPS, generics just seem to be designed to do more at any given crunch level. Some of them so much so that they are dying off because you can already do anything in them and no further books are required.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1061686The thing about adventures is they're consumable goods, while rules are durable goods. People do not like buying new durable goods. They want whatever they bought to last as long as possible, either until it becomes too unstylish or eclipsed by better technology. People do not like buying new computers; they like playing new computer games. People do not like buying new media players; they like watching new movies and shows.

People do not like learning new rule sets; they like playing new adventures.

The thing the RPG industry (esp D&D) has always been really stupid about is treating rule books like consumables. They expected the average customer to be excited about adding new rules to the existing system, then, once he got tired of learning new rules for that system, to be happy to switch to an all-new system and keep adding rules to that. They did this to chase revenue instead of customers, and it always bit them in the behind in the end. Learning rules is actually this inconvenience you go through to get to the fun of having adventures with your friends.

Good post, but people do seem to like buying new smartphones, thinking the new one is shinier than the last.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1061643Its rather sad players felt they had to wait until D&D gave that to them.
GURPS, Fantasy Hero, Palladium Fantasy had "been there, done that" for over a decade before 3e.

Well, to be fair, most of them were lamenting the lack 'within D&D.' They may very well have been playing dwarven monks and halfling paladins in other systems for decades.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1061686The thing the RPG industry (esp D&D) has always been really stupid about is treating rule books like consumables. They expected the average customer to be excited about adding new rules to the existing system, then, once he got tired of learning new rules for that system, to be happy to switch to an all-new system and keep adding rules to that. They did this to chase revenue instead of customers, and it always bit them in the behind in the end. Learning rules is actually this inconvenience you go through to get to the fun of having adventures with your friends.

I agree publishers were stupid about it, but it's partly because they bought into the myth that adventures don't sell. That's a legacy of the shovelware that TSR put out in its later years - reams of cheap and lame adventures. A high-quality adventure that a group can build a whole campaign around has tremendous market appeal. They create a sense of shared community and experience, and take the load away from busy DMs. I'm not a big Paizo fan, but credit where credit is due, they showed the industry that there is a market for adventures, and it's big enough to support large publishers. I'd hazard a guess that 2/3 or more of the people who played 5E D&D in 2018 were using one of the WotC adventure paths.

Quote from: Haffrung;1061691I'd hazard a guess that 2/3 or more of the people who played 5E D&D in 2018 were using one of the WotC adventure paths.

I rarely hear of any 5e group that isn't running a homebrew campaign.

Some internet people say they run those, but I have yet to meet a meat-space person that did.