Dungeons & Dragons 2024 - New core books, new evolution

Thanks, @Navaronegun . That video certainly hit at the probable problem with focusing on digital at physical’s expense. I’m a little less concerned about other systems since they are already such a small part of RPGs I’m thinking that the folks that would play them will go out to find them anyway. But the planned obsolescence (and even unplanned for that matter) is what worries me the most. And I hadn’t thought of the ‘video-gamification’ of the table and making creativity more difficult, but that too makes sense.

DnD is moving away from what I’d purchase anyway, but I could still see myself getting the base books/programs anyway. But all this assumes the WoTC doesn’t screw this up, which I’m not totally sure they can do.

If WoTC can’t handle it with current creative minds and business plans, then Hasbro will find new people. From their standpoint, too much money would be left on the table otherwise. There are DLCs, Cosmetics and heck, maybe NFT outfits and skins to sell! Think like minis and battlemats but virtual. All the second-order effects of this approach on the hobby overall will not be to my taste certainly.

If they could turn this into a marketplace, a la Roblox, they’d print money and probably keep the community happy. A big part of D&D is homebrew and creativity. If you’re limited to what WotC provides it’s never going to match your vision for your character or adventure.

Digital is inevitable. WotC is already trying to phase out physical Magic cards. You get fewer cards per pack now, and the new and interesting mechanics are being put into the digital only cards for Arena. In fact that just released a digital only set, complemented by a Commander only set in print that is frankly boring and shitty compared to the digital cards.

Gaming has become subscriptions and microtransactions. If D&D doesn’t follow it’s going to die again because its owners will kill it.

That video is funny when he says Fortnite skins cost 99 cents. Try $10-$20.

One D&D testing continues with Unearthed Arcana’s Expert Classes.

  • Bards and Rangers now prepare spells instead of picking a list of spells known.
  • Bards and Rangers will have access to their whole spell list
  • All the classes now fit into one of four groups: Expert, Mage, Priest, or Warrior.
  • Expanded list of new feats.
  • Ability Score Increase is now just a feat
  • Exhausted is now a condition that has levels of Exhaustion. 10 levels total. If you go over 10 levels of Exhaustion you die.
  • Players now get Inspiration on a natural 1 on a d20 roll. A similar mechanic is already in use by many other game systems. It takes the sting out of critical fails.

I will say that one of my favorite things about Pathfinder is how versatile and interesting their feats are. I would like to see more out of feats in D&D and hope, if nothing else, this is a good step in that direction.

Our Curse of Strahd GM is already salivating over this line of change-thinking. He loves to run an extremely high-danger game, but the current Exhaustion mechanics swiftly devolve into an inescapable death spiral, so he’s mostly avoided messing with them outside of a few very controlled moments.

That change to exhaustion makes the spell Sickening Radiance less appealing to use.

Hasbro has named Dan Rawson as its new Senior Vice President for the Dungeons & Dragons brand. Rawson was announced as the new head of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, filling a role that was posted four months ago. Rawson comes from the tech sector, having worked for Microsoft Dynamics 365 as COO, with previous stints at Coupang (a South Korean online marketplace) and Flipkart (an Indian e-commerce company.)

According to the press release naming Rawson, Hasbro stated that his job responsibilities will include “lead overall Dungeons & Dragons brand growth and profitability across digital, physical, and entertainment.” The job listing’s responsibilities notes that Rawson will serve as the primary senior spokesperson for the brand internally and externally, and will be responsible for evolving the D&D tabletop experience to include both physical and digital environments.

Wizards of the Coast president Cynthia Williams specifically cited Rawson’s digital experience in a press statement, noting the increased “digital capabilities and opportunities” for Dungeons & Dragons thanks to the acquisition of D&D Beyond earlier this year. The press release stated that “Mr. Rawson’s e-commerce skillset and digital-first experience will lend itself to continuing to support the growth of D&D Beyond alongside Dungeons & Dragons overall.”

That guy’s resume certainly points in a particular e-direction.

The last double-digits of hours I’ve played D&D and other RPGs have been online. If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, or me and some of my players having kids, I don’t think that would have been the case. I can’t deny the utility of playing online, but I hope the new D&D head won’t push his product too far away from the game’s origins – a bunch of brats and/or nerds having fun sitting around a table.

Sadly, I think they’re going all-in on digital and physical books will eventually be an afterthought.

I don’t know why it’s not standard practice to include an ebook copy with the physical version, something that movies and music have done for like 15 years.

A lot of other TTRPG games do exactly that.

There’s also those that are part of the Brick and mortar organisation, where if you purchase a physical game, they give you a code to this website with access to PDF version.

Yep, sounds like a move to a subscription based model. My group is currently considering buying into DnD Beyond as it works well, and we want more options than the base options.

Hasbro’s CEO Chris Cocks and Wizards of the Coast’s CEO Cynthia Williams spoke at an investor seminar about the future of D&D. Williams started by dropping this gem:

“D&D has never been more popular, and we have really great fans and engagement, but the brand is really under monetized."

Then both Cocks and Williams addressed how they’re going to use D&D Beyond and D&D One to increase revenue.

The executives are less worried about design than installing more on-ramps for players to spend their money. Williams mentioned that while dungeon masters comprise roughly 20% of the D&D player base, they make up “the largest share of our paying players”. An investment in digital, she posits, will allow Wizards of the Coast to “unlock the type of recurrent spending you see in digital games”.

Cocks described a plan to shift D&D into a “4-quadrant brand” similar to Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

As you might imagine, the TTRPG community has gone into overdrive on that.

My group moved from DND 3.5 to Pathfinder, and haven’t looked back.

This was mostly because 4th edition looked like a completely different game than what anyone was used to. But we didn’t go to 5th ed either. I still don’t love how simplified a lot of the mechanics are, as it will often lead players to trying to create very broken solutions to problems they face. There is a fine line between too many rules and too few, and I think that 5th ed pulled back just a little too far.

This is a bit of an issue with Pathfinder 2.0, as it has simplified quite a lot from 1.0, which got into such rules-lawyer territory it felt like each combat was a cross examination between the players and GM with the rule-book as the judge. There was such little wiggle room in PF1 for any sort of “flying dwarf” action that players didn’t even think to try and bring stuff like that up. This is a good thing, but also is limiting to role-play quite significantly. It also leads people towards just min-maxing character builds rather than building a character for role-playing reasons.

But, that being said, the lack of a great online character builder software really kind of stinks. This is one area where Paizo is way behind WOTC on.

Those comments on monetization seem unreal. They are saying exactly what players joked about the company being like. I mean, the CEO has a point, people are really interested in D&D, but nobody is buying anything. This is the situation of every TTRPG, where players often share books and notes. The DM ends up spending all of the money.

Sweet, horse armor, but for your D&D character.

The article doesn’t directly cover it, but one of things the CEOs talked about was a shortage of dungeon masters holding back revenue potential. Basically, during the pandemic, players and DMs were all over the place on Zoom, Roll20, Twitch, etc but now that things have opened back up, its harder to get people willing to be DMs for D&D because it’s not an easy job. Since DMs contribute the lion’s share of revenue, WotC wants to get that number up.

D&D One is supposed to partly address that by making the rules more DM-friendly. Good luck with that, especially if they hold true to One not being a significant change from the current ruleset. I don’t think it’s possible to make the rules easier to DM without drastically changing the system.

The second way WotC wants to encourage gamemastering is by offloading a lot of the effort onto the digital tools they want to sell. As a recurring subscription with DLC. And spread that cost over all the players in the group instead of making the DM pony up for all of it.

Pathfinder really is 3.5 on steroids. Pathfinder 2 includes a lot of D&D 5.0 (I would like to think the "carefully curated parts). D&D 4.0 was widely frowned upon; it’s trash. On the other hand, 5.0 has grown to become pretty darn good now that plenty of splat books are out there. D&D “One” (or whatever) is going to need some time in the oven, but it has some interesting concepts.

I like aspects of both Pathfinder 2.0 and D&D 5th ed. My complaints with both is that they’re pretty intense to DM and they’re both actually quasi-fantasy superhero games. Neither game is what I’d choose to play for low-fantasy fast encounter gaming.