The predicted sale is a consequence of other predictions; while 4th ed might be doing well, it is not the sweeping success of the 3.x / d20 era. The fact that 270-odd staff have been let go from WOTC in the last year is enough to tell me that they are feeling the pinch, and that profits are down. That suggests to me that if a sufficiently large carrot was dangled in front of them, they might be willing to part with the product line – and that someone with enough ready cash might dream of recapturing the glory days. It’s probably worth remembering that no-one expected the d20 system to become as big as it did – but now everyone knows that it’s possible, with the right product marketed the right way, at the right time.

I don’t agree that printing costs are getting cheaper. While there have been savings by bringing layout and prepress production in-house, using computer technology, there is not a lot more to be saved in that area; labour costs continue to rise, and I don’t see any brilliant new printing presses on the horizon that give more pages for a given printing cost. I think they are as cheap as they are going to get. The only way to really make things cheaper is to cut out the printing press altogether and sell as downloadable PDFs – letting the consumer pay the price of the actual printing; but a PDF is NOT the same thing as a proper hardcover or even soft-cover book. The fact remains that the D&D books are very expensive to buy, so much so that a lot of people I know were unwilling to take a flyer on a supplement that might or might not be useful. Furthermore, even though all the signs are there that we have reached the bottom of the trough in the current global economic downturn, disposable incomes will remain strained for several years to come; that impacts on how many copies of something will be sold, eroding profit margins. The only way to reduce the pricetag and make the volumes more accessable is to lower production standards.

Thanks for your contribution to the debate. You don’t have to agree with me, and I might very well be wrong about ALL my predictions – but predictions with a certainty of success (”there will be a 5th edition d&d”) are pretty boring, don’t you think?

- I seriously doubt AD&D will be relaunched. I think that’s wishful thinking on your part. New editions of D&D will certainly be different, but not necessarily the way some may wish; perhaps it will go FURTHER in the direction 4e has gone :-). Who knows.

- I really don’t think a large media company would have any desire to buy D&D. Hasbro is huge. If it continues to do well (it is, btw) Hasbro will keep it. If it starts to flounder, they’ll sell it to another hobby/game company or shelve it for a span of years.

-printing gets cheaper every year, why would production value drop?

And the market had a dozen games I can think of from that era: D&D, AD&D, Traveller, Empire of the Petal Throne, Tunnels and Trolls, Monsters Monsters, Starfaring, Star Patrol, Chivalry & Sorcery, RuneQuest, Starships and Spacemen, Boot Hill, Gamma World, and the brand new Star Frontiers.

I only played D&D & AD&D in middle school… mostly due to lack of exposure. I knew of Boot Hill from the back of the AD&D1E PH. Star Frontiers was adverted in every comic book. I discovered Traveller in 1983… a week after playing in a very unsatisfying Star Frontiers game in front of the School Library…

I’ve watched the industry since… and I think WOTC/HasBro is way out of touch with the market. At a time when people want inexpensive, they are releasing some of the most expensive stuff around. In a time when the only money they make off of older editions is PDF sales, they quit. (The 4E stuff was leaked in PDF before it even hit the shelves… leaked as exquisite PDF’s… they need to check that chinese printer they use)

I’ve looked at 4E. I’m unimpressed, nonplussed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 4.5E in 3 more years. It’s a solid tactical game with light roleplaying.

The initial boom was 78-83… loads of 3rd party stuff starts then… Bard Games’ Atlantean line was a different system, but it could also be used as a D&D setting with little to no effort. Bushido was mechanically incompatible with D&D, but it was easy enough to simply use D&D classes instead, and play it anyway. EPT was a licensed redress of D&D. Everyone tweaked rules. Every ruleset played diferently, and it was then that I learned that System Matters.

The 1983 or so semi-collapse pulled a lot of small press stuff out… most of it was drekh anyway; FGU seems to have pretty much folded. But, by 1986, many new games were coming out, and the second tier of game companies was doing strong: GDW (Traveller, 1886, 2300), Palladium (Robotech, TMNT), WEG, SJG, FASA; all of them had a key product line or two subsidizing their other stuff. And an upstart that no one knew was going to explode: White Wolf.

There was a strong and interesting 3rd tier: Chaosium, Bard Games, FGU (Space Opera, Bushido, Other Suns), ICE (Rolemaster/Spacemaster/MERP), HeroGames (Hero System), BTRC (Timelords, CORPS), Columbia Games (Hârn), Victory Games (James Bond), RTalsorian (Mekton, Cyberpunk), Flying Buffalo (Tunnels and Trolls, MSPE)…

There was a steady flow of neat stuff, then in the early 1990’s, the D&D slump ended with AD&D 2E, and the revised D&D 2E Cyclopedia. And White Wolf’s World of Darkness created a whole new “class” of gamerdom… and joined the second tier.

The mid 1990’s had a crash… a lot of game companies folded; some bought by another upstart, WOTC, fueled by MTG profits. Some folded because the core designers were hitting retirement (GDW, FASA), or made fatal distribution errors (GDW, WEG, and several smaller companies). TSR fell to the second tier, leaving no company on top… SJG, WWG, and TSR all battling. Then WOTC bought up TSR amidst much consternation over their pattern of Buy & Close.

D&D 3.0 with the D20 STL and OGL1.0a refired a market that was flagging due to a variety of social and gaming issues… and fueled an explosion again of small press stuff. It created a market ready for the indy games.

The 2003-04 correction was retail’s shakedown of the dross from the gems… several companies came out of it stronger… and retailers came away with a lot of product they couldn’t move.

The future isn’t going to see “one game for everyone”… even as D20 was spilling over every store’s shelves, Greg Stafford and Robin Crosby launched Hero Wars. Mongoose was building up a fanbase using RuneQuest, a percentile system. Pendragon was being revised. Traveller was D20′d, and had a GURPS edition (now has 2), and a HeroSystem edition.

What we are likely to see is a lot fewer “Tier 2″ companies (now essentially only WWG), and a lot more strong tier 3, and the rising tier 4 of indy games.

D&D 4 has a lot of corporate interia, but if it falters before being ready to drive 4.5, we probably won’t see a WOTC/HASBro 4.5… and the recent PDF fiasco is a PR problem from hell.

Pretty good points anyway, but I’ll add my voice to the chorus of people saying, “Straight-jacketing?” Of course it is. Any RPG that relies on a “class” system is straight-jacketing by its nature. That’s why I’ll never play d20 Star Wars after having enjoyed the old West End version so much.

It’s true that the third editions were the least straightjacketing of the previous incarnations of D&D. 3E was better built with more options, but it also had tons and tons of optional material that players came to take for granted. Now 4E doesn’t have all that optional material yet, but it’s very well built, with at least two intended ways to play every class. Each supplement related to the class seems to be offering a couple more, and you’re perfectly free to mix and match many pieces from the intended builds. So maybe you can’t cherry pick your levels from dozens of different classes and multiclasses with 4E, but you can already play more than a dozen different types of many of the classes, and still customize them to bits with the feats beyond that.

Normally I play far less straightjacketing games than any edition of D&D, but I’m currently playing a 4E halfling pyromancer/illusionist who has mastered bardic rituals and masquerades as a ranger, and I can’t remember being so excited about a D&D character since back in the days when D&D characters was all we had. Just the fact that he could participate meaningfully in every round of combat from the moment he entered the game (”Awwww…. Did all the little minions go ‘boom’?”) makes him my favorite D&D wizard ever, but there’s way more to it than that.

Leonard Wilson’s last blog post..The MMORPIfication of Tabletop Expectations