D&D 5's Launch Hits & Misses

Back when we used to work for DAZ 3D, we used to have these "post-op" meetings after a product launch to figure out what went well, what went wrong, and what we could do better next time. Well, D&D 5's launch has got me thinking along those lines, so here is my independent assessment of the hits, misses, and do better next times of the game's launch. Mind you, the Monster Manual and DMG are not out yet, so this story is not over.

The Misses

#1 - No Day One PDFs: We are in the age where players have their complete set of roleplaying books on their phone or tablet. Why you wouldn't want kids to read the rule book at school on their phones and electronic devices is beyond me.  I have my complete Pathfinder set on my tablet, and in fact, I shop for tablets on how well they work at the gaming table with this collection. PDFs are far easier to use and carry around, and I love being able to do text searches on the book. Unless I totally missed where the PDF was at, I feel not having this out on day one was a huge miss.

#2 - Staggered Release: I know releasing three books over three months keeps the hype going, but D&D is a game where you really need all three books to play. It's painful waiting for them, I can't enjoy the full game and I am bought in now, so I must wait. Or feel forced to buy modules that I am not really excited about. We live in an age of instant gratification, so I am expecting to be gratified and have my books for my gaming group's enjoyment. We want to play!

#3 - Weak Third Party Support: Back at DAZ 3D, when we did a major figure launch, we had forty to fifty add-on products (clothing, hairs, skins, accessories, etc) from third party publishers and artists ready to go and in the store on launch day. Yes, we ensured the success of our figures by working with partners ahead of time, getting them pre-release figures, taking QA issues all the way up to launch day, and helping them make their products the best they could be. Think of it this way, D&D 5 had the chance to line up an army of third-party support with other publishers way ahead of time, and it didn't happen. Also, work cannot begin on products until the community has a license, so if this is coming next year, great 3rd party products will probably come out the year after that, in 2016. That is a long wait.

#4 - No Hero Lab Support: With Lone Wolf's Hero Lab character creation program, you have a large market of roleplaying gamers that are willing to pay extra for a character creator to manage their games. These customers are already gamers, and have expressed interest in your game. They are by definition "heavy users" and many of them probably run a game with other players, making them a group with a powerful influence on what games are played. I feel excluding this group from having a D&D 5 character creation rules module is a mistake. I know Wizards is working on their own system, but their online tools have always been hit-or-miss,but having Hero Lab users in the game with your system on day one would have been a great thing and created a lot of buzz.

#5 - No Third Party License: Promising to release a 3rd party publishing license next year is not good enough. This should have been done before launch, with the license printed in the book, and it should have been OGL-style with less restrictions than D&D 4th Edition's GSL. You cannot ignore the OGL and hope it goes away. Plus, the health of the gaming ecosystem depends on third parties being able to play and create products for your game system. I think this is the biggest threat to the long-term popularity of the game, at least for me. I like third party worlds, class books, spells, and supplements. I like supporting the creative community of third party publishers. D&D 5 could be the king of the hill and control the gaming narrative like D&D 3.x, or it could end up a walled garden with little third party interest like D&D 4. I feel the quality and support of the 3rd party license will determine the future of this game.

The Hits

#1 - Great Player's Handbook: A great product forgives a lot of sins, and Wizards did an incredible job with the Player's Handbook. It is well put together, compete, easy to use, and just darn pretty. Full color art on nearly every page? Wow. If they can keep up batting these books out of the park, they will sell and attract interest. It is a super hard job to put together a book with this quality and consistent content that pays homage to every edition, and they did a great job.

#2 - Playtest Crowd Excited: The playtesters were out on day one with their wall of 5-star reviews for anything D&D, so this was a hit. Getting your base pumped up and out there is also a notoriously difficult thing, so the D&D playtest team deserves huge credit for running a massive effort and getting people pumped up about a product far ahead of release day. This type of pre-launch testing costs a lot of money just paying employees to be there and do their jobs with no product on the shelves bringing revenue in, so Hasbro deserves props too for having faith in that team and supporting the playtesters.

#3 - Support of All Settings: D&D 5's team adopted a "big tent" approach and supported all of D&D's previous settings and timelines. Did you like the original Forgotten Realms pre-spellplague? It's supported and fine to play in, you don't need to feel like a time-travelling pariah if your group chooses to play there. Like the original Mystara? Fine, we support that too. Birthright or Dark Sun? In and in. I love this big tent support, and also the support of your favorite setting and era. It is good stuff, and kudos to the team for taking this direction instead of rebooting and disrupting every setting again for 5th Edition.

#4 - Previous Edition PDFs: dndclassics.com is where you can go and buy all that previous edition material, so you don't have to buy it off of ebay or used. This was an incredibly great move by Wizards, and they partnered with another PDF seller (DriveThruRPG) to get this done. This is an amazing and positive development for the fans of every previous edition, and it keeps the classic settings alive and the source material for 5th Edition out there and available to new generations. This collaboration gives me hope the 3rd party support license thing can be worked out, and it also is a huge boon for the fans who loved and supported D&D throughout the 40 years of the game. It also plays beautifully into the "support any setting and era" strategy of the above. Support this site, it is just amazing.

#5 - The Rules: The jury is still out technically on the D&D 5 rules, but they chose simplicity over complexity, and this won a lot of fans over. They did a good job on the basic rules, but I want to see more options and spells for builds. To have a complete view of magic items, encounter builds, and monsters, we need all three books. Still, the rules are tight and the math is under control, so they did a good job on game design here. I'm hoping we get a lot more options, and also we shall see how this tighter system holds up to exploits and min-maxers. I like the less-heroic focus and more realistic feel of D&D 5, but I also like the crazy high-magic of Pathfinder, so both games have a place at my table. It was a good decision to go a separate path here and make both games different in focus and feeling.

Overall

This is an interesting list, and four of the five misses could be remedied at a later date. The slower launch and the huge delay in 3rd party products hurt the most, at least for me. I want to see publishers come up with new worlds to play in, new classes to try, and new spells designed along the 5th Edition paradigms. It's why I feel the 3rd party license is so critical for the game.

On the flip side, it won't take much simplification, cleaning up, and paring down to make a possible Pathfinder 2.0 into something similar (if simple is the new thing and Paizo decides to go that way) - and I bet you the OGL or something better and more open will be in place for that game as well. Even if Pathfinder doesn't change, it is still an incredibly robust and community supported system that I can't see its popularity declining.

I want D&D 5 to have a vibrant, thriving ecosystem that's open and free to publish for, and I think most gamers do as well. I don't want to see a repeat of 4th Edition, where you have a game with potential and popularity among the fans, but the third party support lacked because of the restrictive license. I have hope though, based on dndclassics.com and some of the other things they have been doing. It's all tea-leaf reading until something is announced, of course, but I am hopeful for a surprise here with community support.