The release of this PDF also marks the start of our open-playtest. As the name suggest, it is a play test that is open to everyone. Download the adventure and let us know what you think of it. Your feedback will be incorporated into the final version of the adventure making the adventure even better.

The Sanctum… is the winner of the June 2009 competition. The July winner has been picked and the deadline for the August competition is only three weeks away. However you have plenty of time to enter the September or October competitions. Drops us an email ( competition [at] 6d6fireball [dot] com ) with your ideas and we will take it from there. All the competition winners will go through the open-playtest and then be combined into a bumper collection of adventures. PDF and print versions of the collection will be available from 6d6 Fireball and all the profits from the module will go back to the writers.

The adventure focuses on the activities of the cult of the Fiery Ladder whose charismatic leader is attracting a large number of followers with promises of power. As the players investigate his apparently peaceful cult they find evidence devil worship and of a terrible fate awaiting the cult’s followers.

The Sanctum was written by Joshua Kitz with Kyle Hurtubise. Two long time roleplaying friends from Canada. This is their first published adventure.

Download the adventure from: The Sanctum of the Fiery Ladder

The fourth part of the D&D Carnival – This time focusing on it the game’s future.

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero”

The simple truth is that D&D, the product and the brand, will one day disappear. Long before that, it will be unrecognisable to anyone who is playing D&D now. This is nothing to do with Edition Wars but it is the inevitable fate of all brands.

When a brand is launched it is new and exciting. This attracts buyers and if the product is good, they tell their friends about it. As the brand grows, the product is refined – the recipe is improved, the packaging made more appealing or the rules revised – until it reaches a critical point. The point when the product and the brand become household names (at least amongst its target audience). The brand will then remain fairly static with a large group of dedicated buyers.

Now the brand has a problem. Sooner or later a competitor will come along with a better product (Google versus Yahoo) or the technology will change (New York Times and all other newspapers) or a new generation will come along avoiding all the products their parents brought (Pepsi versus Coke, Levi Jeans). If the brand sits still and does nothing it is doomed but if it changes, it risks upsetting a large number of existing fans (e.g. ‘New Coke’, D&D 4e). Some brands manage to steer a path though this, adapting to the changing times but they are always on the edge. Sooner or later the product’s luck runs out and the death spiral begins.

When a trusted, reliable brand starts to fail, the first thing every marketeer does is to relaunch it and aim it at a younger market. This almost never works and only damages the brand further. Faced with a failed relaunch and declining sales, most companies will sell the brand on. Whoever buys the brand has to now relaunch it again, which again will fail. This cycle continues the value of the brand is destroyed.

Sometimes this process takes decades (e.g. the American car industry), sometimes just years (almost any fashion brand) but all brands, all products, follow this life cycle.

Where is D&D in the Brand Life Cycle?

Clearly Fourth Edition is a stumble. WotC / Hasbro made the decision that they needed D&D to change, to make it a 21st century product. If they had gotten this right it would of been brilliant and secured the brand for the next 10 years or more. But they got it wrong. The online tools were late and are still missing most of the promised features. The changes to the rules themselves were too radical, alienating a large number of fans and yet they have failed to attract a new audience in meaningful numbers.

This does not mean that D&D is now on a death spiral but if Hasbro work hard, they could kill the brand’s value in just a few years. If a bean counter at Hasbro panics and decides that there needs to be a version 4.5, not to make the game better (as 3.5 did to 3.0) but purely to make money then D&D is doomed. A new version within the next three years would alienate all the 4.0 players and won’t attract any of the people who stuck with 3.5. It would be a death blow for the brand.

A variant on this scenario is Hasbro selling off the D&D brand to a small, more RPG focus company. The D&D brand won’t be cheap to buy and whoever buys it will need to make a lot of money back quickly. This inevitably means a new edition with all the problems Hasbro faced except without the financial support of a major toy company. Bankruptcy is almost guaranteed.

The Worse Thing Hasbro Can Do

Strangely, the worst thing that could happened to D&D is for Hasbro to turn it into a hugely successful MMO like World of Warcraft. The revenue potential from a smash hit MMO dwarves that of D&D. The marketing and development of the computer game would be the number one priority and the tabletop game would be forced to fall into line. The tail would wag the dog and it is hard to see many fans sticking with the tabletop game in this scenario.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Most brands or products are not killed outright by marketing blunders. They are just repeatedly wounded and continue to struggle on with a slowly but surely decreasing fan base. There will be a day when D&D is no longer the biggest RPG. Another product will steel its crown and D&D the brand will eventually die. But all this is unimportant. As long as we have our books, our dice and our imaginations, we will keep D&D alive. ]]> http://6d6fireball.com/rpg/dd-is-doomed-but-not-just-yet/feed/ 74 http://6d6fireball.com/rpg/adventure-writers-group/ http://6d6fireball.com/rpg/adventure-writers-group/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:36:27 +0000 chris http://6d6fireball.com/?p=1013 One thing noticeable about the entries to the Adventure Writing Competition is that many writers encounter the same problems when making the leap from writing adventures for themselves to writing adventures for publication.

To help everyone, I’ve set-up a Google Group for adventure writers. The group is by invitation only but to get in, all you have to do is email me with your ideas for an adventure. I will add you to the group, give you feedback on your ideas (in private) and guide you towards converting your idea into a published adventure. You can use the group to bounce ideas around, ask questions and for mutual support.

Group members will also get to see and comment on draft versions of the PDFs and help guide the Open Playtest. I will also use the group to offer advice on dungeon construction and plot development.

The group is open to anyone who wants to take part in the competition. Email me with your adventure idea or ideas. It doesn’t matter how rough they are and it does not commit you anything, but it is the first step to being published. So take five minutes, scribble down your ideas and send them to: competition (at) 6d6Fireball (dot) com.

Chatting to Dingle’s Games in the pub last night, discussing the idea that 3.5 is making a resurgence amongst gamers. When Paul got home he started this thread on Paizo and this got me thinking that we need a flag or icon that 3.5 gamers can gather behind. So instead spending my time doing work, I knock this up. Its resemblance to another logo is purely coincidental, honest.

I’m placing the logo into the public domain, so do what you like with it. Smaller 100px and 50px wide versions are also available.

Wizards have not been as successful in this as they wanted. Reaction to 4e is mixed and many 3.5 players are simply not interested in upgrading but surely it is just a matter time. Teenagers buying their first game are far more likely to purchase a new copy of 4e then a second-hand version of D&D 3.5. In five years time, 3.5 will only be played by a rump of older players who have a large financial and emotional commitment to the game just like there are a handful of people still playing 2nd edition or original AD&D.

Maybe, maybe not.

There is one good reason that the inevitable victory of 4th edition might not be so inevitable – freedom.

Wizards made one of the boldest commercial decisions ever when they created the D20 system and the Open Game License (OGL). A company with the dominant product in the industry, a brand that is a household name, made it easy for and encouraged other companies to use that brand to make money. This is like Disney saying that it OK for other companies to make and sell cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse. It was either genius or insanity.

Personally I think it is genius. Rather than fighting to protect and grow their existing market share, Wizards decided to grow the market. The OGL and the d20 system reinvigorate a tired brand and a tired industry. Suddenly there were d20 game systems appearing all other the place and a mass of third party products for D&D. WotC gambled that it was better to have 20% of a $100 million market than 30% of a $50 million market.

With the release of 4e, Wizards had a problem. A big corporate like Hasbro wasn’t interested in letting other people use its intellectual property but the cat was out of the bag. They could not simply make 4e proprietary again like the good old days of AD&D and 2nd edition. So Hasbro did what all corporates do in this situation – they used their market dominance. The 4e Game System License (GSL) made little difference the average gamer directly but to the numerous small and self-publishers that had been born thanks to the D&D 3.5 OGL, it was a killer.

The new 4th edition license was a lot more restrictive and most importantly, forced companies to choose between D&D 3.5 and 4e. The idea of throwing out a decade’s worth of product development was off-putting enough for the smaller firms but the new license was subject to change. Unlike the OGL, the GSL could be change or revoked by Wizards at anytime. You won’t find many business school professors who would recommend making the fate of your company dependent on the whim of another company who has no interest in your survival.

Wizards big mistake

If 4e’s license had been as open as 3.5’s then most suppliers would of upgraded as soon as their old stock sold out. Why would a small company produce new products for a shrinking 3.5 market when everyone is buying 4e rule books? But by making companies to choose between D&D 3.5 & 4e, they forced some companies into committing to 3.5 and those people have a real incentive for 3.5 to grow and prosper.

Pathfinder and Dungeon-A-Day are obvious examples of companies committing to D&D 3.5 but there are less obvious example and in many ways more worrying ones for Wizards.

Independently, two websites have appeared targeting exactly the same problem with D&D 3.5 – monster creation. The flexibility of the monster system in 3.5. was brilliant but even creating a mid-level boss was a major task that could take an hour or more. For time pressed or inexperienced GMs this is quite a barrier (and one Wizards addressed in 4e by making monsters a lot simpler).

Dingle’s Games Monster Generator and the more advanced NPC Generator takes a lot of the effort out of creating monsters. The NPC generator even includes magic items and spell selection. As a GM it gives you real power over your monsters and allows you to fine tune them for your party. [ DISCLAIMER: I've been gaming with Paul who runs Dingle's Games for 25 years and I helped him with some aspects of the web site so obviously I'm slightly biased ]. Appearing a few months later, MonsterAdvancer.com is less advanced in its features and less logical to use but it is very slick in its presentation.

Both of these sites represent a massive investment of time and a vote of confidence in a game system that WotC are trying to kill. More importantly, they take a very different route to Wizards when it comes to online tools. Whilst 4e tries to simplify the system for the players overall, the trend with D&D 3.5 (and its derivatives) is to simplify the life of the GM through online tools and content.

The GM is king.

Gamers tend to start playing in their early teens and stop playing in their early twenties when they discover drink, girls, jobs and mortgages. Any product that isn’t attracting young, new players is doomed. Wizards know this and hence 4e is targeted at the young teens market with World of Warcraft like game play and simpler rules. But Wizards have underestimated the power of the GM.

It is people who are willing to GM who drive the games industry. They are mostly likely to buy the books and they are most likely to recruit new people into the game. And why do GMs do it? Because they enjoy being creative. Roleplaying is all about creativity and the GM is the heart of that creativity. A game system that allows GMs to exercise their creativity will always win over one that doesn’t.

D&D 3.5 gives that freedom to create. The growth of sites like Dingle’s Games are both a consequence of that freedom and verhicle for spreading that fredom. This feedback loop of creative freedom enabling more creatively puts 3.5 in a strong position to attract new players and grow.

This does not mean that D&D 3.5 will surpass 4.0 or even survive long-term but it is not going down without a fight.

This is on behalf of a friend who is looking for a few people to try out his new tool before he opens it up to the world. This will only take 15 minutes (or many hours if you get hooked) plus however long it takes you to write a brief email letting him know what you thought and any problems you encountered.

The tool hopes to make one of the time consuming parts of GMing D&D 3.5 much, much faster and at the same time give your adventures some extra bite.

Please comment below and I will email you back with all the details. There is no payment or anything but if you have a blog or something else to promote we can repay in linkage.