This move by WotC leaves me a bit confused:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2015-09-16

Just when you're trying to reclaim the RPG market share with the new edition of your game, why would you shut down your forums completely?

Ugh... I wish this surprised me.

The Auld Grump

The Player Help and Campaign sections have invaluable resources in them.

Particularly the Eberron forum with Keith Baker's responses. There is more than a few books worth of stuff there. Great stuff too.

As of this week, Pathfinder has outsold 5e for the month of September at the local BaM!.

5e did well enough in the first week (kids coming back to school and picking up the game to play), but dropped after that.

Pathfinder has remained steady.

On the other hand, she has not seen a migration from 5e to Pathfinder, which was the case with 4e.

So both games are seeing new entrants, not just recycling the older players.

There is still more than a week, so a surge could put 5e back in the lead - but the ratio is pretty close to 1:1 in any event.

We are seeing parity, not dominance.

The Auld Grump

Unconnected to the above - I am hearing chatter that one of the big reasons for 5e was that the DDI, which was supposed to be a big moneymaker for WotC, ended up costing them more than it was making them.

Much like Gleemax, it ended up being a liability, not an asset.

So, now that 5e is out, which does not need DDI support, WotC is closing things down on the digital front.

They just never figured out how to to it right.

That 4e's demise had more to do with its ties to the DDI than with the fact that Pathfinder was outselling D&D.

*EDIT* Mind you, I am hearing that chatter from IT folks, who never much liked the way that the DDI was handled - it is anything but an unbiased opinion.

The Auld Grump

That doesn't surprise me. Pen and Paper gaming has always been an old-school sort of industry. Trying to move that to a more digital age isn't easy, and isn't always practical on every front. Digital copies of books works great. Having to be online to play or make a character is another thing. And something that requires a monthly subscription to use isn't an easy sell--especially when it doesn't include some physical product for the customer.

DDI was a killer for me in 4e... it was literally the end of a game session if someone levelled up. Because it took a couple days online to balance all the options and decide what was optimal for both the character and the group.

4E was a game clearly built for computer tools.

As my group is mostly engineers and compute programmers, that wasn't a problem for us. We all can optimize characters quite well when we want to and had an excel sheet that did all of our leveling up for us in the first month after 4E release.

As I've said before, what I've heard is 4E was an effort to cash in on the MMO craze by making a game that needed a monthly subscription. When that didn't materialize they changed course.

Looks to me like the approach they are taking with 5E is to make a very simple base game that they will expand periodically to support new "types" of campaigns. But that just is intended to keep the lights on for a small team and that's it.

The big money maker they seem to have planned is the licensing deals. Video Games (Neverwinter, Sword Coast Legends) Software (Fantasy Grounds) and Mixed Media (D&D Movie) etc. If they hit with a big movie (AKA Marvel) then they could keep the lights on at the RPG side of the house for many years... If not, they are going to be limping along with whatever little money comes in from the license deals.

I gather, from those IT critters, that the online tools started off being very good, very useful, and then were revamped to be less good and less useful.

And that making them less useful was a deliberate design choice.

I... dunno - I never played enough to pay any attention. Looking online... those IT folk weren't the only ones complaining - it really does look like WotC revamped their tools and removed functionality. What the heck?

The Auld Grump - looks like they aren't as biased as I thought....

I suspected up front that this was the business plan. To me it looked like a peace offering while bowing out.

The books are good and complete. Monsters don't 'level' like they used to, so, there isn't much need to fill out the ranks as it were.

Supplements are expensive and should be relatively rare purchases, and harder to make money at, so maybe they are over rated. (I think so... although I've loved quite a few PF ones.)

Right now, the fact that 5e is paper and pencil friendly is a HUGE sell on me. Its so friendly that I don't think you even need supplements to enable GMs. Any old book will do for a grognard like me.

That might sound trite, but I'd contemplate pulling Iron Kingdoms into 5e. I'd avoid that with 4e or Pathfinder.

The only reason that I have not played much 5e, apart from the playtest, is simply that I really like Pathfinder.

I am much happier not playing a game because I like something else better than not playing a game because I deeply dislike the game.

5e looks fine.

If someone in my group feels like running 5e then I will happily roll up a character.

I think part of the reason that people in my group are sticking with Pathfinder is that I am usually the one to look at new systems, and right now I am not looking. (When I do, it will most be looking for a superheroes game.)

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* This is inertia and momentum, not lack of interest.

I am fairly content with the material available for 5e. More Eberron specific material would be nice but I am homebrewing as needed for now. Also more monsters would be nice but I am homebrewing those as needed too. The same for magic items and spells.

Using 3.X and Pathfinder materials in 5e is a breeze too.

The local Books-A-Million! has dropped D&D 5th edition from their store.

I am not sure why, and I do not know how permanent the drop will be.

I do know that at the same time they halved the size of the movies and music section, and doubled the size of the religious section. (Movies and music has been in decline since the store opened - but still earned more than twice as much per square foot than the religious section, which leans heavily towards the Pentecostal. Making the section that sells less bigger....)

I am inclined to thinking that they are dropping D&D for the same reason that Walmart does not carry the game. (But does sometimes carry Pathfinder, because Pathfinder isn't D&D... it makes my brain hurt.)

The Auld Grump

The changes at your BaM suggest a religious bias, which if true would explain the less financial decisions being made.
Any idea if ownership of the store has changed recently?

BaM! has 5e on the shelves again - two shelves out of a ten shelf unit - 1/2 a shelf still carries 4e stuff.

The rest is Pathfinder, except for several copies of Mouse Guard,

Turns out that there is a reason - Pathfinder is selling like crazy, at many BaM! locations.

At this location they have sold more Pathfinder in the last two months than in all the year previous - and the year was already well above last year's sales for the game.

D&D spiked early, then faltered quickly - sales of the main three books remain strong, but the supplements are dragging the average way down - in spite of the strong sales of the main game, the combined weight of sales for Pathfinder - from core rules through the treasure cards through the map packs through the adventure paths through the freakin' comic books! are above the high for 3.5, let alone 4th or 5th editions, of D&D.

I... can honestly say that I had no idea that this was the case - Pathfinder has an enormous mass of intertwining sales - the very thing that WotC was trying to get with 4e.

I am officially boggled. And for some reason the silly comic books are selling really well.

On the other hand, the local management is pushing to have the Christian section scaled back down - the sales there actually dropped when the section got bigger. (Turns out that folks in Maine do not particularly want mirrors in the shape of the cross....) The big push is sending folks away.

They have no suggestions as to what to fill the space with - but they definitely want the cross contamination to be scaled down.

The Auld Grump

I see what you did there.. and you should feel bad.