On New Editions

For those that haven't heard, rumor has it that Paizo Publishing has taken the large sponsorship position away from Wizards of The Coast for GenCon 2013. With it they receive the largest exhibition hall in the entire show. If you check your 2012 GenCon Map you'll notice that Paizo already had quite a large foothold. Over the last couple years the Pathfinder RPG has picked up steam. Many a gamer both local and from afar are reporting that D&D NEXT feels like a hybrid of 3rd and 4th edition. A lot of people are speculating that this new edition is an attempt to recapture some of the audience they lost when they transferred to fourth. The same audience that transitioned to Pathfinder.

It's tough to tell whether there's a marketing team sitting in the Wizards of the Coast tower scheming up this new edition. I can imagine five or six people in corporate suits, sitting around a dark marble table with the WotC symbol etched menacingly in it. They're all sipping imported tea and coffee, while the most nefarious one at the head of the table begins cackling as he pets his equally nefarious cat.

Honestly, I still think that the team they hire to write a new edition still has the lions share of creative control when it comes to these sort of things. Even with Monte Cook parting ways with the company I still feel like the creative differences he described had more to do with the overall direction the company was taking, as opposed to any specific difference he might have had with villainous marketing directors.

That being said, every new edition that comes to the market is a solid product. 4th edition was a fantastic game in it's own right and D&D NEXT will have a lot going for it. The major failing of these editions are the fact that they won't evoke the same feelings that earlier iterations of this game have. This is what Wizards of the Coast so desperately needs, whether they know it or not.

The real problem with this industry seems to be a simple question; how does one generate continued income from a product that -by it's nature- is designed to last forever. A well written RPG can stand the test of time. Even early game designers used "the new edition" as a tool to increase the quality of already existing products. Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons were sold next to one another on the shelf; one did not invalidate the other. It feels like WotC is using new editions as a marketing tool. They attempt to replace the entire previous edition in hopes of creating a boost in sales.

It's this vicious cycle that has my store moving away from Wizards of the Coast entirely. Games that have picked up steam are Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and Savage Worlds. These are games that respected their previous editions in a lot of ways. Most of their sales come from creating new intellectual properties such as Savage Worlds plethora of world settings. Shadowrun and Pathfinder continues to expand on an already existing intellectual property with campaigns, adventures, and optional supplements that helps players dig deeper into their rich lore.