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Xion_Anistu-san
2008-12-09, 01:22 PM
Just got the latest D&D podcast and was shocked to hear Dave Noonan and Sr. Editor Julia Martin, who was with D&D since TSR days. According to other articles online, there were 100 people laid-off in this latest reorganization.

Now as much as I don't like 4E, I truly hate the idea that people just got sacked only weeks before Christmas. That is no good business no matter how you look at it. Morale has got to be in the crapper out there. I feel sorry for everyone involved including the ones who didn't get a pink slip.

So hypothetically speaking, what would happen if the D&D line went belly up? What would your local game group do? What do you think would happen to the industry overall?

<Waits for Clarence or the Ghost of Christmas Future to show up>

mikeejimbo
2008-12-09, 01:25 PM
*shrug* We'd keep playing 4E, probably, homebrewing new stuff when we got bored.

On the bright side though, GURPS might get more popular. :smallbiggrin:

Mercenary Pen
2008-12-09, 01:32 PM
Here's hoping that most of the die-hard RPG specialists who got the boot find other jobs within the industry (and fairly quickly)...

There is now a good variety of RPG talent out of work because of this, and those companies nipping at WotC's heels would be foolish to pass up a chance to hire said talent. It could well be that, in the space of a year, Dave Noonan is publishing material for *insert name of RPG publisher other than WotC here*

R4ph
2008-12-09, 01:32 PM
People would just play one of the multitude of other Roleplaying Games instead, or continue using the DnD that already exists. DnD going away isn;t going to cause the entire hobby to die overnight.

snoopy13a
2008-12-09, 01:35 PM
So hypothetically speaking, what would happen if the D&D line went belly up? What would your local game group do? What do you think would happen to the industry overall?



I doubt that the line would go belly up. I believe that another company would purchase it with the belief that they could make it leaner and more profitable.

Starscream
2008-12-09, 01:38 PM
I doubt it will get that bad, but seeing as we're being hypothetical...

I guess I'd just stick to 3.5 mostly. I don't hate 4E, but even though I've given it a few play-throughs and enjoyed it, it never grew on me the way the last system did. I started out when I was ten playing 2E basic, lost interest for many years because I moved to a redneck town and there was nobody around who was into rpgs. Got back into it in college, and by then it was 2005 and 3.5 was king.

I could give a list of gripes about 4E, but it hardly seems necessary because I'm sure there are a thousand and one gamers on this site who have already done so, and they're probably the same ones. But I've always had one nice thing to say about it: it will get better.

With every new sourcebook released, a few of my complaints fade a bit. Maybe a new paragon path sounds like a lot of fun, or an item is awesome, or some new powers make a lousy class a good one. And I always felt that when the next core books are released, and I get my beloved monk and druid classes, I'll be much more enthusiastic about the system.

Still won't like it as much as 3.5, but great movies can have inferior sequels that are still fun to watch in their own right.

So if no new 4E material came out, my feelings for the system would probably just stay where they are, a grudging "meh".

Ryuuk
2008-12-09, 01:38 PM
Just got the latest D&D podcast and was shocked to hear Dave Noonan and Sr. Editor Julia Martin, who was with D&D since TSR days. According to other articles online, there were 100 people laid-off in this latest reorganization.

At the moment, this isn't an isolated incident. To quote a tried an true NPC saying "*sigh* times are tough..."

If the whole thing went belly up though? Well, there's still plenty of books (I'm still 3.5), I'd probably continue as normal.

OverdrivePrime
2008-12-09, 01:42 PM
If Wizards goes down and takes D&D with it? Pathfinder for the win.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-09, 01:44 PM
Just got the latest D&D podcast and was shocked to hear Dave Noonan and Sr. Editor Julia Martin, who was with D&D since TSR days. According to other articles online, there were 100 people laid-off in this latest reorganization.

That's bad news! Did they cite any reason? I doubt it was subpar sales figures, so perhaps it's a victim of the bad economy?

Dragonus45
2008-12-09, 01:45 PM
The moment the company went bankrupt there would be someone with cash looking to buy it up. That's how it works with bankruptcy everything gets sold and someone else buys the D&D brand name.

Frerezar
2008-12-09, 01:46 PM
It'd mean that4e will stay as a reminder of what greed does to creativity. And hopefully someone will buy the rights and publish 3.5 again . Not likely but a guy can dream

Krrth
2008-12-09, 01:47 PM
As a Brand Name, the use of the DnD logo has profit potential. Some company would snap up the rights, just to get the name. The resulting game might not share any resemblance to what we already have, but it should still exist.

Fax Celestis
2008-12-09, 01:48 PM
The moment the company went bankrupt there would be someone with cash looking to buy it up. That's how it works with bankruptcy everything gets sold and someone else buys the D&D brand name.

That's exactly what happened to TSR.

Zeful
2008-12-09, 01:51 PM
The moment the company went bankrupt there would be someone with cash looking to buy it up. That's how it works with bankruptcy everything gets sold and someone else buys the D&D brand name.

That's not what was asked. What was asked was about D&D going belly up not Hasbro/WotC.

And I stand by the assertion that if D&D stops being a profitable game, Hasbro will mothball it and keep the rights.

Tacoma
2008-12-09, 01:52 PM
Our DM just started a 2E game last Saturday. So it's not like the success or failure of WoTC is going to affect me at all. It doesn't affect you unless you play 4E. Or are champing at the bit for 5E.

Darrin
2008-12-09, 01:55 PM
So hypothetically speaking, what would happen if the D&D line went belly up? What would your local game group do? What do you think would happen to the industry overall?


It's puzzling, because historically, RPG sales tend to do *better* in a recession. Or maybe not exactly better, but not quite as bad as other entertainment sectors.

One of the reasons behind this may be because on a cost-per-hour basis, RPGs are one of the cheaper entertainment alternatives. One $30-40 book can conceivably keep multiple people occupied for hundreds of hours. Spend that money on a video game, and at best you can hope for 50 hours with some kind of Final Fantasy knockoff. Or take you family to the movies for the same money, and you may barely get two hours of entertainment.

WotC is in a little different situation because they are part of a much larger company that depends on retail sales, and Hasbro is bracing itself for a big slump in revenue. They are naturally going to look at cutting labor costs, and Hasbro has never really had a firm grasp of how much staff you really need to develop a strong RPG product line (then again, you could say no RPG company has understood this any better).

Another factor is how RPG books are being severely discounted or just eliminated altogether at most hobby/game shops. That started several years ago, so the current economic situation may not have much effect on that. Hasbro may not care about the smaller retail shops... I would guess what worries them most is what's happening at the big box stores like Walmart and Target. I'm not sure how much Hasbro is selling online... I imagine the majority of RPG sales are now via Amazon or some other online store, but even that might not be a big enough chunk of sales for Hasbro to worry too much about it this year.

Something else to keep in mind is it may just be cyclical. There was a big payroll purge after 3.0 was released. Most of the lead designers were laid off (Tweet, Cook, etc.). With the main 4E rulebooks out in stores, this allows WotC to cut down development costs and hire freelancers instead. Shifting to freelance contracts makes middle-managers very happy since they have a lot more flexibility when fighting over budget money. Freelancers can be added or ditched very quickly, and upper management is less likely to turn down "discretionary" spending.

The real panic is probably a little further down the road. Sometime around June or July '09, WotC is going to look at the adoption rate of 4E vs. 3.x, and someone's going to have to explain to the big scary Hasbro people why their biggest competitor is the previous edition, why third-party support has been slow to embrace 4E, and why their online strategy is still sucking up gobloads of cash with little to show for it.

Frerezar
2008-12-09, 01:59 PM
I jut saw something like this a while back ago. A company in charge of a long running succesfull game decided to completly change the game, do a reboot per say, in order to ncrease profit. So it went all out with it and told everyoe tht it had been a succes, the best thing to ever happen to the company. Months later (after a few new sets of the game with the new format were out) they declared the rights were being sold, ad the game ended.
Anyway, all i want to say s that creating 4e femanded a lot of money, and that for what ive seen it hasnt been welcomed as the hasbro people expected, so its not that farfetched to see the product dying

Tsotha-lanti
2008-12-09, 01:59 PM
So hypothetically speaking, what would happen if the D&D line went belly up? What would your local game group do? What do you think would happen to the industry overall?

The exact same thing that has happened over and over and over for the last 30+ years when RPGs have gone out of production?

People keep playing. If the game is as amazing, or the setting as stupendous, as, say, RuneQuest and Glorantha, fanzines and endless websites full of excellent content will pop up. (Seriously, no RPG has the same combination of quality and quantity for fansites and fan material.) And eventually a license is going to expire or become the property of someone interested in it, and a new version will come out.

Oslecamo
2008-12-09, 02:01 PM
That's bad news! Did they cite any reason? I doubt it was subpar sales figures, so perhaps it's a victim of the bad economy?

Perhaps it was the 100 people guilty of all the errors in D&D history, who had managed to evade the radar untill now.:smalltongue:

LibraryOgre
2008-12-09, 02:02 PM
IIRC, there were a good number of layoff right after 3.0 was released, as well.

Norsesmithy
2008-12-09, 02:16 PM
I can't say I was expecting this, but neither does it surprise me. If you look at their launch date, and the performance of the market overall in the short period after, they kinda picked a crappy time to roll out a new (and probably very expensive to produce) product line.

Do we know what departments the cuts happened in? Are they even all people who are assigned to the DND product line?

Xion_Anistu-san
2008-12-09, 02:22 PM
That's bad news! Did they cite any reason? I doubt it was subpar sales figures, so perhaps it's a victim of the bad economy?

Yes, the new host mentioned you could read more about in Bill Slavisec's "Ampersand" article in the latest "Dragon."

RPGuru1331
2008-12-09, 02:22 PM
That's bad news! Did they cite any reason? I doubt it was subpar sales figures, so perhaps it's a victim of the bad economy?

Probably. Things have been pretty horrid for a while. I'm just glad they had jobs this long, really.

Tengu_temp
2008-12-09, 02:27 PM
If Wizards goes down and takes D&D with it? Pathfinder for the win.

I don't think anything short of divine hellish intervention is going to make Pathfinder even remotely as popular as any edition of DND ever was.

Another_Poet
2008-12-09, 02:28 PM
If that happned I would love to see Paizo buy up the rights to D&D. Or, funnier yet, Blackmoor. But I don't think Arneson would bother with taking over a game like 4e or even 3e. Paizo would really be the best bet.

Sadly I do agree that it's more likely Hasbro would mothball or drastically remarket D&D rather than giving up the rights/license. No matter what happens, 4e won't be thrown away in favour of reviving 3.x. Sorry fellow 3e'ers. 4e might be scaled down to a small niche product or marketed more to tweens and kids but has a loyal enough following to still be profitable on the right scale.

Gaming is a long tail industry and it seems even the giant names like D&D have to play to that to make money.

edited to add: My hope is that Noonan will gather some of the best of his former coworkers and form a new company. I'd love to see what comes out of that sort of design team.

Prometheus
2008-12-09, 02:33 PM
I'm sorry to hear that regular employees took the beating for this, but is it really all that surprising that the WotC is not doing so well lately? In my memory, they focused on commercializing and dumbing down MtG when pokemon and Yo-gi-oh were selling well (which turned out to be a fad) and they released 4E. I don't know how there other products are doing, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was reflective of a larger pattern of reacting to a money squeeze by making it worse.

mikeejimbo
2008-12-09, 02:34 PM
Wait, does Wizards use freelancers?

Xion_Anistu-san
2008-12-09, 02:40 PM
Do we know what departments the cuts happened in? Are they even all people who are assigned to the DND product line?
From the podcast, I would guess everyone involved in the lay-off was involved in the D&D product line. I don't have a subscription to Dragon to read the latest "Ampersand" article.

Hzurr
2008-12-09, 04:08 PM
Hmm...people keep discussing 4E like it was a huge flop. Didn't WotC have to go back and do serious re-printing because the demand was so high? I mean, while I agree that 3.X has a fairly strong following, just from reading the boards here it seems like there's been a pretty large movement to 4E.

Also, a lot of the people who were let go might also have been the programmers and artists who were designing everything for D&DI. Now that it's more or less up and running, they only need to keep enough people to maintain it, rather than finish building it.

Add a crap economy, and getting rid of the (my assumption) fairly large influx of people they had to bring in to get 4E off the ground, and I'm not hugely suprised by this.

Odds are that a lot of what we'll see from WotC in the next year or two will be things that have already been completed by these people, and are capable of being tested/polished by a smaller number of designers.

Still though, losing your job right before Christmas sucks, although at least they're not alone (how many thousands have lost their job in the last month?)

Another_Poet
2008-12-09, 05:13 PM
Wait, does Wizards use freelancers?

Only if they already have published gaming material under their belts. Or at least, that was the policy the last time I read their submissions guidelines which was over a year ago.

Person_Man
2008-12-09, 05:31 PM
Hasbro sales and stock, like almost all retailers, has been way down recently. So there's a fundamental market shift going on - unemployment is up, spending is down. Worst recession since the 70's, and arguably since the Great Depression.

On top of that, WotC botched the marketing (and depending on your opinion, design and development) of 4E, and has been losing money on it. They shut down Gleemax, have drastically cut back their publishing schedule, employees have been quietly leaving for months, and now people are getting laid off.

Now, WotC/Hasbro owns also own the rights to collectible card games and to "constructable strategy games" (which covers certain types of miniature games). These intellectual properties are far, far too valuable to sell off. So WotC isn't going belly up.

I believe that the most likely scenario is that WotC will simply stop publishing new D&D products. If we're lucky, they'll license them out to a 3rd party publisher, or set up some sort of OGL for 4E.

It's too bad WotC can't go belly up. If no company existed, then there's no one to enforce their intellectual property rights. All D&D would essentially be free on the internet for years, until someone bought the rights and started sending out cease and desist letters again.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-09, 05:34 PM
Hmm...people keep discussing 4E like it was a huge flop. Didn't WotC have to go back and do serious re-printing because the demand was so high?

While I have no doubt that 4E is selling well, does anyone from either side have any figures on this? As they say on XKCD, [citation needed].

Kurald Galain
2008-12-09, 05:38 PM
On top of that, WotC botched the marketing (and depending on your opinion, design and development) of 4E, and has been losing money on it. They shut down Gleemax, have drastically cut back their publishing schedule, employees have been quietly leaving for months, and now people are getting laid off.
Wait, what? Please elaborate?

Sure, Gleemax was a failure, but I must say I haven't noticed any botched marketing or cutbacks in publishing...

AslanCross
2008-12-09, 05:55 PM
It was a shocker to me too, especially since I'm used to seeing Dave Noonan's name on by lines on my book covers. That said I sure pray these people can easily get jobs that allow them to continue contributing to the industry and feeding their families.

Mando Knight
2008-12-09, 06:17 PM
While I have no doubt that 4E is selling well, does anyone from either side have any figures on this? As they say on XKCD, [citation needed].

It's actually from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed), then parodied in XKCD (http://xkcd.com/285/)...

Waspinator
2008-12-09, 06:27 PM
Wait, does Wizards use freelancers?

Yep.


About the Author

Eric Cagle cut his teeth at Wizards of the Coast but now lives the extravagant freelancer lifestyle. Look for his name on everything from Dungeons & Dragons to d20 Modern and Star Wars products. Recent credits include the Grimm roleplaying game, Tome of Salvation, and Hollow Earth Expedition. Eric is currently the Managing Editor for No Quarter Magazine. He lives in Seattle, where the coffee is dark and bitter -- like his goddesses.

http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/BP5regera

horseboy
2008-12-09, 07:03 PM
So hypothetically speaking, what would happen if the D&D line went belly up? What would your local game group do? What do you think would happen to the industry overall?

<Waits for Clarence or the Ghost of Christmas Future to show up>We'd continue to play Earthdawn and Rolemaster.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-09, 07:25 PM
It's actually from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed), then parodied in XKCD (http://xkcd.com/285/)...

Missing the point much?

mikeejimbo
2008-12-10, 12:00 AM
Yep.

http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/article/BP5regera

Cool, I didn't know that. Well they can't be all bad then. If my soul didn't already belong to another major corporation I might trade it to them for freelance work.

TheOOB
2008-12-10, 12:02 AM
If a game company goes out of buissness, another company will pick their properties up, and that is oftentimes a good thing. An up and coming company who has to prove their worth to an entrenched fanbase has more pressure to make a good product they a declining complacent company. For example, Catalyst just took over Shadowrun 4e's rights and the game is doing better then ever with new quality books coming out almost every month.

Dervag
2008-12-10, 12:03 AM
It was a shocker to me too, especially since I'm used to seeing Dave Noonan's name on by lines on my book covers. That said I sure pray these people can easily get jobs that allow them to continue contributing to the industry and feeding their families.In Dave Noonan's case, the mere fact that you're used to seeing his byline works in his favor. Not so sure about the others...

RTGoodman
2008-12-10, 12:15 AM
For those interested in reading Bill Slavicsek's info on the job cuts in the latest Ampersand article, here it is.


Changes

On Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast consolidated its digital game organizations and made a few adjustments in other areas of the company. This resulted in the elimination of certain jobs, including a number of names you may know.

What does this mean for D&D? While the loss of people we've known and worked with for a long time is sad, Wizards continues to be an innovator and leader in hobby games, and our vision for D&D remains the same. We're committed to the growth and success of our core brands. We're committed to D&D 4th Edition and our slate of roleplaying game products, miniatures, and novels. We're committed to D&D Insider and to constantly improving and increasing the number of digital offerings, including Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, the D&D Compendium, and the D&D Character Builder. Our products, whether digital or physical, will continue to be the best in the industry.

While we'll miss those who have left the company, and we wish them well, I continue to lead the most talented team of game designers, game developers, game editors, and book editors ever assembled. James Wyatt oversees the design team, which includes veteran staff such as Rich Baker, Bruce R. Cordell, Rob Heinsoo, and Mike Mearls. Andy Collins oversees the development and editing teams. Chris Perkins oversees the D&D Insider magazine team. Kim Mohan continues to serve as Managing Editor. All told, I have thirty people working in the building every day to bring you the best D&D RPGs, miniatures, novels, and magazines, and I'm very proud of each and every one of them.

Ken Troop, Didier Monin, and others still keep the technical aspects of D&D Insider on track and rolling along. And there's a host of other Brand, Marketing, Sales, Art, Production, and Logistics staff that provide the behind-the-scenes support necessary to bring each product -- whether physical or digital -- to you each and every month.

That's all still in place. That's all still here. In these challenging times, D&D continues to perform well. From the amazing launch to the release of the latest products, the D&D audience grows and thrives.

As far as 4th Edition and D&D Insider is concerned, we're just getting started.


Now, I know they've gotten rid of some relatively well-known folks (like Noonan), but one thing I notice is that a lot of people that work for WotC don't seem to be full-time employees. I mean, yeah a lot of books are people like Rich Baker and Rob Heinsoo and others, but read the authors' bios in a good selection of your books - a lot (like our own Giant, Ari Marmell, Rhiannon Louve, and Gary Astleford, just to name some from books I've got lying around) do their work when commissioned to do so (or, at least, that's how I THINK it works...). I would hazard a guess that, even if some of the people that were laid off WERE relatively famous designers, they won't be completely gone (unless WotC has changed its policy on who gets to write D&D books since 4E came about).

That said, I'd say probably a lot of those jobs that were cut were computer-related, since Bill talked about it being a "consolidation [of] digital game organizations."

And to answer the OP's question, I doubt the D&D line itself will go belly-up any time soon - there are all sorts of companies that, if Hasbro/WotC were to give it up, would immediately want to get it for themselves. Even if it's not the most profitable thing out there, Dungeons & Dragons has the kind of name recognition both within and outside the gaming community that that alone would probably make it worth it.

Xion_Anistu-san
2008-12-10, 12:26 AM
So hypothetically speaking, what would happen if the D&D line went belly up? What would your local game group do? What do you think would happen to the industry overall?This is my question really. Strictly hypothetical and just looking for what options people may have in mind.

Thanks for a copy of the article rtg0922.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-10, 12:29 AM
My cynical translation from publicity-speak to English:
Changes

On Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast consolidated its digital game organizations and made a few adjustments in other areas of the company. This resulted in the elimination of certain jobs, including a number of names you may know.We fired a bunch of people, including some of your favorite authors. Hope you don't mind.
What does this mean for D&D? While the loss of people we've known and worked with for a long time is sad, Wizards continues to be an innovator and leader in hobby games, and our vision for D&D remains the same. We're committed to the growth and success of our core brands. We're committed to D&D 4th Edition and our slate of roleplaying game products, miniatures, and novels. We're committed to D&D Insider and to constantly improving and increasing the number of digital offerings, including Dragon Magazine, Dungeon Magazine, the D&D Compendium, and the D&D Character Builder. Our products, whether digital or physical, will continue to be the best in the industry.Despite having trashed half the talent, we're banking on you being too stupid to notice the inevitable decline in quality. We will however continue to pump out things faster than you thought possible, in hopes of you spending money on stuff that has no relation to our actual core product.
While we'll miss those who have left the company, and we wish them well, I continue to lead the most talented team of game designers, game developers, game editors, and book editors ever assembled. James Wyatt oversees the design team, which includes veteran staff such as Rich Baker, Bruce R. Cordell, Rob Heinsoo, and Mike Mearls. Andy Collins oversees the development and editing teams. Chris Perkins oversees the D&D Insider magazine team. Kim Mohan continues to serve as Managing Editor. All told, I have thirty people working in the building every day to bring you the best D&D RPGs, miniatures, novels, and magazines, and I'm very proud of each and every one of them.Everyone we fired that you cared about? Yeah. They sucked. The remaining people are the ones you actually like.
Ken Troop, Didier Monin, and others still keep the technical aspects of D&D Insider on track and rolling along. And there's a host of other Brand, Marketing, Sales, Art, Production, and Logistics staff that provide the behind-the-scenes support necessary to bring each product -- whether physical or digital -- to you each and every month.No matter what, we will always employ bureaucrats.
That's all still in place. That's all still here. In these challenging times, D&D continues to perform well. From the amazing launch to the release of the latest products, the D&D audience grows and thrives.*base bragging that ignores the current economic upheaval in the US and world markets*
As far as 4th Edition and D&D Insider is concerned, we're just getting started.Our sales will pick up. No, really, they will. Trust us.

Thurbane
2008-12-10, 12:49 AM
Well, in my ideal world, WotC would go belly-up, Hasbro would decide to sell off the D&D brand name to recuperate some losses, and someone who actually gives a damn about the game and the fanbase could take over.

Never gonna happen, but a guy can dream. :smallbiggrin:

Thurbane
2008-12-10, 12:53 AM
This is my question really. Strictly hypothetical and just looking for what options people may have in mind.

Thanks for a copy of the article rtg0922.
My group would continue as is, with our vast library of 3.5 material. That, and stuff like Pathfinder, other 3rd party, homebrew etc. The fate of WotC makes very little difference to us. :smallsmile:

Asbestos
2008-12-10, 01:09 AM
A lot of this seems like a thinly veiled '4e sucks' thread...

But, as others have said, if somehow D&D went belly up someone else would purchase it just for the name. It'd be like TSR all over again.


Also, honestly, what do people think sold more... 4e books... or the past 4 splat books for 3.5? I don't think anyone pre-ordered MM V (or whatever the hell came out last)

Thurbane
2008-12-10, 01:41 AM
Also, honestly, what do people think sold more... 4e books... or the past 4 splat books for 3.5? I don't think anyone pre-ordered MM V (or whatever the hell came out last)
Well, not to start another edition wars conversation, but I bought every non-campaign-specific splatbook WotC released after 4E was announced. Not on pre-order, though, but from my FLGS.

If the sales were sagging on 3.5 splatbooks after 4e was announced, you can hardly be surprised, though...

BobVosh
2008-12-10, 02:01 AM
A lot of this seems like a thinly veiled '4e sucks' thread...

But, as others have said, if somehow D&D went belly up someone else would purchase it just for the name. It'd be like TSR all over again.


Also, honestly, what do people think sold more... 4e books... or the past 4 splat books for 3.5? I don't think anyone pre-ordered MM V (or whatever the hell came out last)

Would you be happy with just the books right now? WotC says "all done, go home." I'm still sitting on the fence with it, but am definitly leaning towards "don't like it as much."

Also, this is the internet. If it was passive-something constantly, would Al Gore have invented it?

On another note, Gleemax died? O.o This is what happens when the closest game store is like 1 hour away, you never learn these things :smallfurious:

clericwithnogod
2008-12-10, 03:19 AM
The real panic is probably a little further down the road. Sometime around June or July '09, WotC is going to look at the adoption rate of 4E vs. 3.x, and someone's going to have to explain to the big scary Hasbro people

I question this, without seeing hard numbers about adoption rate and book sales. I don't think Hasbro cares whether people play with the books they've already purchased.

So what matters is how well the PHB II and such sell, as well as the other 'XXXXX Power" books. There is no way to be sure that book sales are going to be a problem. I expect them not to be. As a wider array of options becomes available, I think more people will convert as well. With everything core, and some things coming in upcoming supplements looked at as essential by the people that have switched or switch because that option is now available, I think more people who play the game they bought will continue to buy supplements than in 3.x. I think the big failures come in generating additional revenue streams beside the books, because the book content is good enough to succeed in spite of the management and marketing.


why their biggest competitor is the previous edition,

If the sales numbers are good, this won't be much of an issue. And, it has the 'Get Out of Jail Free' answer of blaming people who created/championed the OGL who aren't with the company anymore.


why third-party support has been slow to embrace 4E,
Nobody at Hasbro gives a flying squirrel about 3rd party support that doesn't involve a paid license. And not many people people jump at the paid license idea in the RG market, particularly at a price that makes it worth the bother to WotC. And, if the product sells really well, the question becomes, "Why didn't we make this product ourselves and get all the money?"

If a non-licensed, 3rd-party, RPG product would make a noticible increase in Wizard profits by stimulating sales in Wizards materials, it would make a lot more Wizard profit if they made it themselves. The hard question you would have to answer is, again, "Why didn't we make this product ourselves and get all the money?"

Most likely, they don't want to bother with a license for anything other than a big-money computer/video game.

As far as non-rpg support, Hasbro makes toys, they could be pumping out all kinds of crap themselves if they thought the brand had any kind of far reaching appeal that would result in significant profit. But I don't see DND action figures and Beholder plushies in the channel. Why would they bother with licensing any other crap that they don't think would sell. What company is going to be able to leverage their mass well enough to match the production costs Hasbro could get down to and pay a licensing fee and still turn a profit on a scale that makes it worth Hasbro's time? If that money is seen as being there, Hasbro could just make it themselves.


and why their online strategy is still sucking up gobloads of cash with little to show for it.

Somebody has to be asking them this question every day, after they ask if they have a strategy and if so, what it is. There may be a bout of laughter in between. Their children probably make fun of them for not being able to take Paypal. "Daddy, look I just got a Paypal payment! How's that going at work? Want me to come in and show you how to set it up?"


Sure, Gleemax was a failure, but I must say I haven't noticed any botched marketing or cutbacks in publishing...

If you haven't noticed any botched marketing, it's because there isn't any non-botched marketing to compare it with.

I like 4e, but the R&D team is like Team Dilbert, persevering in a comical morass of bad business practice.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 03:38 AM
Well, in my ideal world, WotC would go belly-up, Hasbro would decide to sell off the D&D brand name to recuperate some losses, and someone who actually gives a damn about the game and the fanbase could take over.

Never gonna happen, but a guy can dream. :smallbiggrin:

Oh the conceit of the disenfranchised. How it has pained me to have observed it for the past 13 years or so.

Listen up, bub. Look at the jobs they're doing. As a rule, game makers don't get paid that much. It's a job you do because you enjoy it. There really is nobody, and I mean NOBODY, at the office, that says, "I hate the fans and want to piss them off", or even "The fans don't matter". The fans are the lifeblood. They may or may not be out of touch with the fanbase, but they honestly don't not-care.

Now, I can see folks at Hasbro not necessarily caring, since they're not used to catering to a fanbase (I think. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if they were though), but Hasbro probably is not sitting in at the production meetings.



I question this, without seeing hard numbers about adoption rate and book sales. I don't think Hasbro cares whether people play with the books they've already purchased.

Honestly, your sales later on in the game are your adoption rate, aren't they?

To answer the original question, I shrug, wait for someone else to pick it up, and keep mostly playing Exalted.

Thurbane
2008-12-10, 04:17 AM
Oh the conceit of the disenfranchised. How it has pained me to have observed it for the past 13 years or so.
Wow, seems you have painted a lot more angst and vitriol than into my little quip than was intended. The smiley didn't give away that it was mostly tongue-in-cheek? :smallwink:

Listen up, bub.
Sorry Wolverine, do continue... :smalltongue:

Look at the jobs they're doing. As a rule, game makers don't get paid that much. It's a job you do because you enjoy it.
Yes - and how much are the employees that WotC canned just before Christmas enjoying themselves right now? :smallconfused:

There really is nobody, and I mean NOBODY, at the office, that says, "I hate the fans and want to piss them off", or even "The fans don't matter". The fans are the lifeblood. They may or may not be out of touch with the fanbase, but they honestly don't not-care.
Two words: Lorraine Williams (http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?int_dnd30_Sean). She openly commented that gamers were "beneath her".

*Yes, I know she wasn't WotC, but the concept stands. There really are (or at least, were) people in the industry that feel that way.

Now, I can see folks at Hasbro not necessarily caring, since they're not used to catering to a fanbase (I think. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if they were though), but Hasbro probably is not sitting in at the production meetings.
As I have repeatedly said in the past, there are (at least) 2 ways to run a company to make a profit:

1.) Build and harvest a loyal fanbase by treating them with respect.

2.) Treat your fans like schmucks to be fleeced at every opportunity.

Obviously, you and I don't see eye-to-eye on which category WotC falls into. :smallsmile:

Kurald Galain
2008-12-10, 04:26 AM
But I don't see DND action figures and Beholder plushies in the channel.
Oh, I'd totally buy a beholder plushie!



If you haven't noticed any botched marketing, it's because there isn't any non-botched marketing to compare it with.
Okay, please elaborate? It's just as easy to say "WOTC marketing sucks" as it is to say "WOTC marketing is awesome". What are they botching, then? Are people ridiculing their campaigns, the way they ridiculed WW's "graduate your game"? Hm, nope. Is there a lack of awareness of the product? Nope, again. Were they forced to withdraw a campaign because of the fundamentalist lobby? Nope times three. What's botching here, then?

potatocubed
2008-12-10, 07:15 AM
Oh, I'd totally buy a beholder plushie!

Me too! I'd rather have a marut plushie, with adorable widdle fists of doom, but even in the event of D&D plushies maruts are pretty unlikely.

As for the original question... if D&D tanked I'd just keep playing. I'd probably revert to 3.5/Pathfinder, though, at least once the current campaign wraps up.

goram.browncoat
2008-12-10, 07:26 AM
As for many other people, nothing much would change for me. Im still playing 3.5 anyway, so it really doesnt matter that much to me. I still dont want it to happen though.

KIDS
2008-12-10, 07:45 AM
Ah well, sorry for those people. On the other hand, whomever was involved in Complete Divine really needed to go anyway... :smallsigh:

Now if you ask me, I have the feeling that 4E produced less than expected sales, but I can't confirm that without seeing their accounting. And I'm certain that marketing wasn't "botched" as so many people put it here and like KG nicely outlined.

Oslecamo
2008-12-10, 08:08 AM
Two words: Lorraine Williams (http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?int_dnd30_Sean). She openly commented that gamers were "beneath her".

*Yes, I know she wasn't WotC, but the concept stands. There really are (or at least, were) people in the industry that feel that way.


And those were very probably the people fired right now by Wotc. That's this kind of regular clean up wich keeps them running for years now.



As I have repeatedly said in the past, there are (at least) 2 ways to run a company to make a profit:

1.) Build and harvest a loyal fanbase by treating them with respect.

2.) Treat your fans like schmucks to be fleeced at every opportunity.

Obviously, you and I don't see eye-to-eye on which category WotC falls into. :smallsmile:

Wotc cares a lot about their fans. More than other gaming companies at least.

Just look at 4e. It's basically a wish list come true for all the people who complained so much about 3.X. Wotc listened to them. And it's still listening.

What do other companies do? White wolf goes around directly downgrading everybody who doesn't play their game and thus calling their own players elitists. Yeah way to go.

InaVegt
2008-12-10, 08:19 AM
According to what I heard, WotC had about 250-350 employees. It's not a big company, never has been, and 100 people is a lot of people for such a small business.

My wager would be that it's the cyclical purge after a new edition with additional lay offs because of the poor economy.

Also, I'm quite surprised nobody mentioned Jonathan Tweet. Neither 3E nor 4E would've been the same without him, and he got laid off as well. (Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies are a direct descendant of Prestige Classes, and Jonathan Tweet invented Prestige Classes [According to his own website.])

Fax Celestis
2008-12-10, 10:48 AM
Nobody at Hasbro gives a flying squirrel about 3rd party support that doesn't involve a paid license. And not many people people jump at the paid license idea in the RG market, particularly at a price that makes it worth the bother to WotC. And, if the product sells really well, the question becomes, "Why didn't we make this product ourselves and get all the money?"

If this were the case, 3e wouldn't have carried the OGL.

DoomedPaladin
2008-12-10, 11:22 AM
As much as losing your job right before Xmas sucks. I hope it does the whole industry good. Some of those guys have been a part of the D&D creation team for so long I'd be suprised if they didn't find their careers and ideas have become stale. Maybe getting out into the wider industry will freshen them up a bit. That might help out the up and comers they'll be working with.

As for the D&D line, I'd see it being mothballed and focus being turned towards the novels. After all that's what Games Workshop did. They made such a killing with their minis and novels that the RPG's were a loss for money not a gain. Happily they let their properties get picked up and devloped by third party guys (Dark Heresy). Don't see Hasbro doing that though.

Hzurr
2008-12-10, 11:33 AM
I'm glad this thread has pulled slightly away from the "WAAAAAAAAA WotC ARE THE WORST THINGS EVER!!!!!!!" tone it began with.

Griping about Wizards is similar to how people complain about "The Man." Everyone wants to "stick it to the man" and blame it all on him, but most of these complaints are vague, inaccurate, or not well thought out.

People gripe about WotC and 4E. So you're going to whine and moan about the company that gave you 3/3.5? I agree with whoever said it before, it seems like a lot of this thread is simply a hazy attempt to make jabs at 4E.

Is firing people right before the holidays bad? Yes, but given the current economic situation, it's fairly common (unfortunately). Hundreds of thousands of other people (and I'm certain many of them were very good in their fields) also just lost their job. Recessions suck, hate to break it to you.

Also, why do people go back and forth between "WotC is making all this money from D&DI, they're squeezing so much money out of us! Waaaaaa!" and "4E was such a huge flop and they failed and are broke because 4E waaaaaaaaa!"

[/rant] (Sorry to everyone if that came accross a bit strong)

*back on topic*
One thing to remember is that when TSR went down, D&D continued. Many argue that it got better (although I hear that the 2E/3E wars were almost as heated as the 3E/4E wars are. I wasn't around for them, but I've spoken to veterans). So yeah, even if WotC goes down, it doesn't mean that d&d will die. It might even get better. Or it might get worse. *shrug* It most likely won't die. Also, didn't TSR take over d&d from somebody else?

Darrin
2008-12-10, 12:07 PM
Wait, what? Please elaborate?

Sure, Gleemax was a failure, but I must say I haven't noticed any botched marketing or cutbacks in publishing...

Person_Man may mean something else, but in my mind WotC's biggest mistake in marketing was the originally tortuous 4E license they tried to get 3rd party publishers to bite on. So while the marketing to fans may have gone just fine, what they tried to pull on 3rd party publishers was almost criminal. I forget the exact details, but it went something like:

* Large buy-in to even take a look at the 4E SRD ($1000 I think).
* Must cease selling all 3.x/OGL product derived from the d20 SRD.
* If you convert any existing product line to 4E, must cease selling all previous versions/editions.
* WotC gets to decide if published material is appropriate, and they can revoke the license or force you to destroy all "questionable" products, even after it's been printed and published.
* If WotC sees something they like, they can take the idea, publish their own version, and order you to destroy all your copies.
* You waive the right to a jury trial in any proceedings against WotC and oh look you agree to pay their legal costs, too, even if you win.

None of the other 3rd party publishers would even go near the thing. The biggest blows were probably Mongoose and Green Ronin, particularly the last one because it was Green Ronin's "Freeport" line that helped jump-start 3.0 sales when there was hardly any 3.0 support material. Adventure modules don't sell well enough to invest a lot of resources on them. Getting 3rd party publishers to punch out modules and smaller softback sourcebooks was a huge part of the success of 3.x (which eventually backfired, but hey, it sold a lot of books).

WotC eventually revised the 4E GSL so it's not quite so restrictive, mostly because the 3rd party publishers were screaming bloody murder. While I'm sure WotC's sales numbers on the core 4E books are outstanding, the publishing schedule for 4E support is way too slow and intermittent to drive up a decent adoption rate. With too many 3rd party publishers still selling 3.x and barely a half-dozen 4E books that customers could buy, there's just not a lot of incentive for gamers to switch to 4E.

The 4E GSL was an attempt to "reverse the damage" done by open-sourcing the d20 SRD. They want 4E to be 100% proprietary. In their arrogance, however, it looks like they've created a niche product that a segment of the D&D market will play and enjoy, but may never be embraced wholeheartedly by the large body of customers still happily enjoying 3.x/d20/OGL. There may be a 4.5 edition to "fix" some of the problems with 4E (which is largely still under development... this idea that your fans will pay you to help develop new classes/powers/etc. via an online community may be very interesting).

I don't know, all of this is wild conjecture on my part, but I don't see the same upswell of support for 4E that there was for 3.x.

Person_Man
2008-12-10, 03:25 PM
But I don't see DND action figures and Beholder plushies in the channel.

http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Tyrant-Plush-Toy-Beholder/dp/B000HE8C6I

Starscream
2008-12-10, 03:32 PM
http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Tyrant-Plush-Toy-Beholder/dp/B000HE8C6I

It has only nine eyestalks, no central eye, and looks like a blue Audrey Two, but I still want one.

potatocubed
2008-12-10, 03:54 PM
Person_Man may mean something else, but in my mind WotC's biggest mistake in marketing was the originally tortuous 4E license they tried to get 3rd party publishers to bite on.

* Large buy-in to even take a look at the 4E SRD ($1000 I think).

$5000 for 'early doors'. I think a couple of companies bit, but they're regretting it now.

Now that I think about it, the whole rollout of 4e was handled appallingly. They announced it... when? Gencon 07? Slightly before? I remember there were 'industry presentations' at Gencon 2007 which had 0 information content. Everyone was wondering about the OGL, and what 4e was actually like, but that was never explained. If you wanted to know anything about what you were signing up for, you had to fork over the cash.

Oh, and I remember the blue t-shirts with the world's ugliest beholder on them. I also remember how quickly that bit of art vanished, never to be seen again.

In... April 2008? I think? The news about the GSL hit. Uproar, furore, etc. Wizards sent their top industry rep to GAMA, the gaming trade show, that weekend... with no answers. Nothing. They gave the same presentations that they'd given at Gencon 07, saying nothing new. Meanwhile all the old 3.x companies are like 'Uh, we're not touching this with a standard-issue 10-foot pole'.

The thing that got me was it felt very much like the game was nowhere near as ready as they said it was - every time you tried to ask questions that weren't covered in the official press releases, there was just silence. Not an official 'can't talk about this' silence, either; a 'who knows?' kind of silence.

(I get this feeling from the books too - a lot of the ways that the rules don't 'fit together' properly have that rush-job feel to them, like the game mechanics were still being tweaked right down to the last second.)

And then there was D&D Insider. Which still doesn't have all the functions that were promised.

Everywhere you looked during the buildup and launch of 4e - at least from the perspective of an 'industry insider' (or wannabe, in my case :smalltongue:) - something was being mishandled. Maybe it looked different from another angle.

skywalker
2008-12-10, 04:00 PM
Now, I can see folks at Hasbro not necessarily caring, since they're not used to catering to a fanbase (I think. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if they were though), but Hasbro probably is not sitting in at the production meetings.

Hasbro actually learned some pretty good lessons about catering to a fanbase with the G.I. JOE line, I think.


Also, I'm quite surprised nobody mentioned Jonathan Tweet. Neither 3E nor 4E would've been the same without him, and he got laid off as well. (Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies are a direct descendant of Prestige Classes, and Jonathan Tweet invented Prestige Classes [According to his own website.])

Supposedly Tweet got laid off once before? Someone mentioned him being laid off during the third edition cycle, too. That being said, that one was surprising to me too. But he seems to have had less creative input into 4e than a lot of others.


If this were the case, 3e wouldn't have carried the OGL.
The primary purpose behind the OGL, even in 3e, was that people would pay to make money for you. It's kinda like "network marketing," people pay you for the opportunity to sell your product (because players must own the core manuals. Therefore, they must pay WotC before they can pay the third party). It's an incredibly perverse setup to me, but it seems to have worked out pretty well in the 3era. I think one reason it's not working out in 4e is that WotC was packaging 4e as less generic, and more specified. Not just a specific genre, but a specific sub-genre, and the inherent complexity in powers, which require high-quality R&D to remain balanced (which WotC seems to have done a surprisingly good job at so far.). What little 3rd part content has been released for 4e, the powers have been reviewed as pretty durn crappy (either uninspiring, or horribly broken), and looking back at 3rd party content for 3e shows that powers spells were the worst part of 3rd party production. In a game like 4e, in which the spells powers are the central mechanic, I think it takes a lot more R&D up front, and the companies with the best R&D are busy making their own games to be selling D&D for WotC.

Darrin, I think it was more important to them that they protect their license than that they get 3rd party support. Some stuff got published in the 3era that, IMO, really reflected poorly on D&D and RPGs in general. I'm talking primarily about the Book of Erotic Fantasy, and the battle Wizards had with them over the style of the book (very similar to legitimate WotC product) and how they wanted to put "Dungeons and Dragons" really large on the cover. Most people know about this. Look it up if you don't. I think it was, first, an attempt to avoid that. I think most of the rest of those rules just came out and stated what was implicit, at least to me, in the 3era: 3rd party d20 publishers are "vassals" of Wizards. It was never stated, and it might not have been de jure by the OGL/SRD/FCC/whatever. But it was de facto by the fact that WotC had the legal power to bash into submission the 3rd parties they chose (like the BoEF publishers).

As far as the layoffs go, I was surprised most by Noonan, whose name just came out on the cover of Martial Power, which I thought was a good book. I think he's always been a good contributor.

But I also think that the "cycle" idea has some merit. The way I see it, I think the most expensive people are the ones they get rid of, which is why you see people like Tweet and Noonan leaving. I think one particular reason why Rob Heinsoo was chosen as "lead designer" is because he was young, fresh, malleable, and cheap. All he had designed or even had major credits for before fourth were the minis rules (look how those wound up) and three-dragon ante. Skip, Monte, and Jon were too expensive and had to be let go, and I think it turned out the same way with Noonan and Tweet's second go-round.

That's just my speculation. Could be office politics or they coulda just drawn the short straws. Doesn't seem like Noonan was disliked, tho, what with being on the podcast... *shrug*

Fax Celestis
2008-12-10, 04:10 PM
The primary purpose behind the OGL, even in 3e, was that people would pay to make money for you. It's kinda like "network marketing," people pay you for the opportunity to sell your product (because players must own the core manuals. Therefore, they must pay WotC before they can pay the third party). It's an incredibly perverse setup to me, but it seems to have worked out pretty well in the 3era. I think one reason it's not working out in 4e is that WotC was packaging 4e as less generic, and more specified. Not just a specific genre, but a specific sub-genre, and the inherent complexity in powers, which require high-quality R&D to remain balanced (which WotC seems to have done a surprisingly good job at so far.). What little 3rd part content has been released for 4e, the powers have been reviewed as pretty durn crappy (either uninspiring, or horribly broken), and looking back at 3rd party content for 3e shows that powers spells were the worst part of 3rd party production. In a game like 4e, in which the spells powers are the central mechanic, I think it takes a lot more R&D up front, and the companies with the best R&D are busy making their own games to be selling D&D for WotC.

The difference here is that 4e is not under the OGL: it's under the GSL, which explicitly states that anything published under it can become WotC's property at any given time. The GSL also has provisions for backwards-effective editing, unlike the OGL, which means that WotC can change it at any time, not notify you, and then still expect you to follow it.

This scares anyone in the 3rd party sector immensely. It basically gives WotC the ability to obtain, for free, your profit margin. And the $5k early-start fee essentially says, "Hey, look, you paid us to do our work for us. If we like it, we take it; we don't like it, we can tell you to stop and you can't do a damn thing about it."

Matthew
2008-12-10, 04:15 PM
Just looks like business as usual to me. The same sort of culling occurred after the initial, and wildly successful, release of D20/3e. In the current economic environment, and given the failure of Gleemax, I would have been surprised if Wizards of the Coast had retained all of its staff for much longer. A high staff turnover has been a hallmark of the company since acquiring the Dungeons & Dragons brand.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-10, 04:17 PM
Accurate Stuff.

An additional aspect of the really bad marketing that I'm remembering now is Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/dndacc/215407400). That was, technically, the first book released with the shiny new for 4e logos and right around the announcement of the new edition... and yet the book is about Mazzanoble learning to play and enjoy 3.5. Not only did the book tick off some female gamers, even in the cases where it achieved was I would assume was it's goal (get more women to play D&D), it did so for the edition that WotC was about to stop supporting!

Say, was Mazzanoble one of the ones that got canned?

Edit: Ah, here's the longer rant I had a while back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59476).

RTGoodman
2008-12-10, 04:22 PM
Say, was Mazzanoble one of the ones that got canned?

I wouldn't think so, considering she has a monthly column in Dragon ("Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard"). Of course, I usually think it's one of the most POINTLESS parts of the magazine, so there's the possibility that they might have gotten rid of her AND it.

Person_Man
2008-12-10, 04:23 PM
Wait, what? Please elaborate?

Sure, Gleemax was a failure, but I must say I haven't noticed any botched marketing or cutbacks in publishing...

WotC had a big build up to 4E, with a big "count down" screen roadblocking their website. Upon reaching zero, the website promptly crashed (http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/08/16/2334255.shtml). This was a recurrent problem (http://rpgcentric.com/tiny-adventures-wizards-continues-to-lag-behind-in-the-electronic-age.html) with all of their online endeavors. A few months after it was launched, Gleemax was shut down after being widely panned (http://www.criticalgamers.com/archives/board-games/gleemax_to_close_shop_yikes.php). But don't worry, closing down Gleemax was a good thing, because it would free up staff to work on D&D Insider. For some reason, this integral part of the new 4E gaming experience wasn't ready (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/06/1522250) when they announced it, and still isn't ready now (www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insider). And when they do release new 4E content, it requires registration (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/2116237) to see the preview, which means that most new customers can't read it and won't bother to jump through hoops just to look at it. And D&D Online in general is widely disliked (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/13/) as a poorly done WoW clone, viewed by most as a cynical attempt to get subscription fees. In what was perhaps their biggest blunder, WotC killed the OGL, and none of the previous big 3rd party publishers signed on (http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/07/31/3rd-party-dd-gslogl-publishers/). WotC pissed off and directly threatened the jobs and livelihood of thousands of their most hard core supporters. And a huge portion of the D&D fan base has dreams of getting their ideas published one day, who now know that the probability of that happening with 4E is close to 0. And every supplement they sold or popular homebrew that someone posts essentially required the buyer to own (or borrow) a copy of 3.0 or 3.5 D&D, support that is not occurring for 4E.

That is why I believe WotC has hugely botched the marketing of 4E.

Matthew
2008-12-10, 04:25 PM
Mazzanoble is an associate brand manager, don't know if she got canned, but I doubt it. Lisa Stevens (Paizo CEO) confirmed the following names immediately after the event:

Randy Buehler (VP of digital gaming)
Andrew Finch (director of digital games)
Stacy Longstreet (senior art director)
Julia Martin (editor)
William Meyers (creative manager, digital design)
Dave Noonan (game designer)
Jennifer Paige (online community manager)
Jennifer Powers (marketing)
Jonathan Tweet (game designer)

I imagine the lengthy thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs.html) at EnWorld reveals some others, but I ain't reading through all that! :smallbiggrin:

Tacoma
2008-12-10, 04:29 PM
It's entirely possible the 3.5 line could be put back into main production, with 4E bringing in players who become dissatisfied and turn to WotC's better offerings.

Then again, with no brand loyalty they might just enter the RPG market with 4E and immediately turn to something else like Shadowrun, Palladium, Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Vampire, FUDGE, Space 1889, Hackmaster, Rifts, Castles and Crusades, GURPS, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, Car Wars, Deadlands, Harn, Empire of the Petal Throne, or Apples to Apples.

EDIT: And the GSL is pretty much worthless. Anyone who signs it and creates anything under it is a chump.

horseboy
2008-12-10, 04:34 PM
Everywhere you looked during the buildup and launch of 4e - at least from the perspective of an 'industry insider' (or wannabe, in my case :smalltongue:) - something was being mishandled. Maybe it looked different from another angle.Well, as a 40K player it struck me as odd that by the time it was announced GW would already have had it at the printers so they'd have all 7 language versions ready, shipped and waiting to go on launch date and WotC was asking for player input still.
People gripe about WotC and 4E. So you're going to whine and moan about the company that gave you 3/3.5?
I would. :smallwink:

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 04:45 PM
The difference here is that 4e is not under the OGL: it's under the GSL, which explicitly states that anything published under it can become WotC's property at any given time. The GSL also has provisions for backwards-effective editing, unlike the OGL, which means that WotC can change it at any time, not notify you, and then still expect you to follow it.

This scares anyone in the 3rd party sector immensely. It basically gives WotC the ability to obtain, for free, your profit margin. And the $5k early-start fee essentially says, "Hey, look, you paid us to do our work for us. If we like it, we take it; we don't like it, we can tell you to stop and you can't do a damn thing about it."
Both of these statements are in error. WotC can not claim ownership over your work. What they are allowed to do is release similar products; T Hey don't have control over your copy rights. An d something important here: Copyright doesn't apply to game mechanics. They ALWAYS had a legal right to use y our mec hanics. You always have the legal right to use the D20 mechanic. That said, they can still easily outproduce and outsell you.

And the OGL explicitly states that Wizards can update the License, and you must use that new one.

Matthew
2008-12-10, 04:51 PM
And the OGL explicitly states that Wizards can update the License, and you must use that new one.

I do not think this is quite correct. WotC can update the original license [i.e the one released in 2000], but there is nothing stopping people using the original license for various things (there might be some hocus pocus related to the use of the D20 trademark, though).

AKA_Bait
2008-12-10, 04:51 PM
Both of these statements are in error. WotC can not claim ownership over your work. What they are allowed to do is release similar products; T Hey don't have control over your copy rights. An d something important here: Copyright doesn't apply to game mechanics. They ALWAYS had a legal right to use y our mec hanics. You always have the legal right to use the D20 mechanic. That said, they can still easily outproduce and outsell you.


Well, unless there is an update that I haven't seen yet, the GSL also gives them the right to force anyone signed on to it to stop production and destroy existing stock (including electronic copies). So, although they can't just take your work, they can force you to stop selling it and then put out something nearly identical where you have no legal recourse.


And the OGL explicitly states that Wizards can update the License, and you must use that new one.

Although true, that's a little misleading. As I recall, WotC can update the OGL whenever they please, but things released as OGL under the older version of the liscence were still released under that version and those terms apply.

Also, one of the big differences practically speaking was that anyone could use the OGL without notification or even a decision being made by WotC. Under the GSL you need to register with WotC, who has the option to disallow you.



(there might be some hocus pocus related to the use of the D20 trademark, though).

There is. The D20 liscence gives WotC a lot more say than the OGL ever did. Essentally, the GSL is a combonation of the two with even stronger language and more rights going to WotC.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 04:58 PM
Well, unless there is an update that I haven't seen yet, the GSL also gives them the right to force anyone signed on to it to stop production and destroy existing stock (including electronic copies). So, although they can't just take your work, they can force you to stop selling it and then put out something nearly identical where you have no legal recourse.
They won't. If they have sense, anyway. I don't think WotC is stupid enough to kill you just to take your mechanics. I imagine that line was put there if you tried to get into some sort of dickery that would allow you to print 3rd ed and 4th ed, and to get you to switch to 5th ed in 10-15 years. Nothing more, nothing less.


Although true, one of the big differences practically speaking was that anyone could use the OGL without notification or even a decision being made by WotC. Under the GSL you need to register with WotC, who has the option to disallow you.
That is true, but I don't consider it an issue. Registerring is a little time and bureaucratic red tape, not a serious challenge.


I do not think this is quite correct. WotC can update the original license [i.e the one released in 2000], but there is nothing stopping people using the original license for various things (there might be some hocus pocus related to the use of the D20 trademark, though).
That is the obvious reading; However, it would actually be fairly trivial to claim that by "This authorized license" they mean "This new License".

Matthew
2008-12-10, 05:03 PM
That is the obvious reading; However, it would actually be fairly trivial to claim that by "This authorized license" they mean "This new License".
Well, alternative readings are for the lawyers and the law courts; the ambiguity cuts both ways. If I recall correctly, Castles & Crusades was published in 2004, after legal consultation with WotC, and continues to be issued under the original 2000 license (which is why a number of other games cite C&C in their legal mumbo jumbo sections, despite borrowing nothing from the actual game, or so I understand).

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 05:09 PM
Well, alternative readings are for the lawyers and the law courts; the ambiguity cuts both ways. If I recall correctly, Castles & Crusades was published in 2004 after legal consultation with WotC and continues to be issued under the original 2000 license.

Well, if you're going to be scared about what can 'technically' be done, you kind of need to pay attention to the lawyers and the law courts. And if they consulted with WotC.. then they were explicitly allowed to. Doesn't that tell you a bit more about the motives at work here then anything else?

Fax Celestis
2008-12-10, 05:12 PM
They won't. If they have sense, anyway. I don't think WotC is stupid enough to kill you just to take your mechanics. I imagine that line was put there if you tried to get into some sort of dickery that would allow you to print 3rd ed and 4th ed, and to get you to switch to 5th ed in 10-15 years. Nothing more, nothing less.

You are a far more trusting person than I.

Matthew
2008-12-10, 05:14 PM
Well, if you're going to be scared about what can 'technically' be done, you kind of need to pay attention to the lawyers and the law courts. And if they consulted with WotC.. then they were explicitly allowed to. Doesn't that tell you a bit more about the motives at work here then anything else?

I am not saying it cannot be read the way you are suggesting, nor am I privy to the legal discussions between any parties involved. However, as I understand it the consultation was to confirm the legalities, not to obtain permission or authorisation (I can neither confirm nor deny this a priori). What I am saying is that it can be read both ways, and it is not accurate to say that publishers are required to use the updated license. Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games has stated a number of times that he considers OSRIC to be entirely illegal, and yet there are actual IP speciality lawyers who disagree. With the GSL you don't have a case, with the OGL you do.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-10, 05:15 PM
I imagine that line was put there if you tried to get into some sort of dickery that would allow you to print 3rd ed and 4th ed, and to get you to switch to 5th ed in 10-15 years. Nothing more, nothing less.

There is an entirely diffrent set of clauses prohibiting publishing under both systems. Note, this also gives them the right to take your fluff too or at least produce something really really similar.

Legally speaking, these clauses allow them to shut you down and take your market. 3rd party publishers understandably are hesitant to sign over such rights even if WotC won't exercise those rights if they have any sense.


That is true, but I don't consider it an issue. Registerring is a little time and bureaucratic red tape, not a serious challenge.

I do. The reason it's more serious is the fact that WotC is activley keeping track of who intends to use it with all the required information for generation of a lawsuit or a cease and desist under the terms of GSL. It's not really about the red tape, it's about the giving them rights, making it logisitically easy to exercise those rights and then praying on their sense/kindness.

---
On another note, I do wonder about WotC's sales. I don't see myself buying as many 4e books as I did 3.5 books since half my group won't switch over. Note that these are also people who bought between them pretty much every 3.5 supplement released and would have kept on buying new ones as they came out. They won't spend a dime on 4e though.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 05:19 PM
You are a far more trusting person than I.

It's not about trust. It's knowledge of what's in their best interest. The only use of publishing this is free marketting. If you abuse your free marketting, they will go away. The GSL really doesn't give them any more rights then they already had; They can say no to you using their logo. The only thing the OGL or GSL really gave you was the allowance to use their own wording in describing the system, when you get down to it. You're following the license for that, and the logo, and they could always say no to the logo. They always had the right to take your mechanics (Albeit not in your own wording, but a minor and unimportant point anyway), and they always had the right to publish something similar to what you did (And never had the right to breach your copyright). So given t hat the GSL (Or OGL!) never gave them or you significant benefits, there's no point in betraying the trust of the 3rd party folks. The only real 'risk' you take is that you may in fact despise 5e, at which point you will have to give up the d20 logo and change the wording, with out some sort of agreement with WotC.



There is an entirely diffrent set of clauses prohibiting publishing under both systems. Note, this also gives them the right to take your fluff too or at least produce something really really similar.
YEah, bu t it can be tricked (I imagine one way to beat it is to sell your current publishing rights to someone else, who then continues to give you free marketting as well as an up front cash sum). And they had th at right already. That's why you see so many illithids and the like in other things hta tHAVE no overt connection to Dungeons and Dragons.



I do. The reason it's more serious is the fact that WotC is activley keeping track of who intends to use it with all the required information for generation of a lawsuit or a cease and desist under the terms of GSL. It's not really about the red tape, it's about the giving them rights, making it logisitically easy to exercise those rights and then praying on their sense/kindness.
Well, I don't have any ethical issues with making a company clear that you're taking from them; But for the difference in motives, I would call it good manners.

RTGoodman
2008-12-10, 05:20 PM
I imagine the lengthy thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs.html) at EnWorld reveals some others, but I ain't reading through all that! :smallbiggrin:

Nah, but I will - unemployment does have some benefits! :smallannoyed:

Looks like some others that may have have been part of this, according to HERE (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs-7.html#post4573979), are Barry Holldorf (Dir. of Facilities and Business Services), Ian Wilkinson (Director of Operations) and Nate Heiss. I don't know how accurate that is, though. There's a new article about it, revealing/confirming most of the names, HERE (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/13847.html).


In other news, people like Monte Cook (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs-7.html#post4573910), Michelle Carter (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs-6.html#post4573799), and Dave Noonan (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs-3.html#post4573195) himself, among others, have all weighed in on the subject.


It's entirely possible the 3.5 line could be put back into main production, with 4E bringing in players who become dissatisfied and turn to WotC's better offerings.

I would say the chance of that is almost ZERO. It just doesn't seem like something a company would do.

skywalker
2008-12-10, 05:22 PM
And the $5k early-start fee essentially says, "Hey, look, you paid us to do our work for us. If we like it, we take it; we don't like it, we can tell you to stop and you can't do a damn thing about it."

My point was, this is exactly how it was in 3e. All the GSL did was formalize it and make it easier for Wizards. But they've always had the legal stick to beat the crap out of people if they wanted to.

Frankly, because of crap like the BoEF (and I'm not saying it's poorly done or that you're crap if you like it, but from Wizards' prospective, it's probably destructive to the image they're trying to create for the game), I think it was a smart move by Wizards to say "Look, this is our mechanic, and if you want to use it, you play by our rules. We're not going to have you going and printing crap and putting our symbols on it, diluting our brand. Sorry." The GSL is still far more open than the license granted by any other game company (IE: None.).

I think having a clear legal option to stop content you don't like, as opposed to hoping a judge reads your looser document in your favor, is far more important to a company than 3rd party support.

As far as being trusting is concerned, economically speaking, RPGuru is right, it doesn't make sense for them to quash 3rd parties. I'm thinking what scared most 3rd parties off is the prohibitive startup cost, not the stuff everyone's playing up so much. If they're smart. Then again, they're running RPG companies, so maybe they're getting all hung up on their "rights" etc, etc. instead of thinking about the piles of money they could make if they stopped worrying.

I still think it could more probably be that they realized that they don't have the chops to put out quality product for 4e, since the core mechanic is powers.

EDIT:
It's not about trust. It's knowledge of what's in their best interest. The only use of publishing this is free marketting. If you abuse your free marketting, they will go away.

Everything you said was great except I want to nit-pick this. It wasn't free marketing. It was marketing the 3rd parties paid to do. So it was the opposite of normal marketing, and, really a huge (and perverse) coup.

Matthew
2008-12-10, 05:26 PM
My point was, this is exactly how it was in 3e. All the GSL did was formalize it and make it easier for Wizards. But they've always had the legal stick to beat the crap out of people if they wanted to.

Frankly, because of crap like the BoEF (and I'm not saying it's poorly done or that you're crap if you like it, but from Wizards' prospective, it's probably destructive to the image they're trying to create for the game), I think it was a smart move by Wizards to say "Look, this is our mechanic, and if you want to use it, you play by our rules. We're not going to have you going and printing crap and putting our symbols on it, diluting our brand. Sorry." The GSL is still far more open than the license granted by any other game company (IE: None.).

The Book of Erotic Fantasy (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=12195&it=1&filters=0_0_10134) is still for sale, they just had to remove the D20 logo (and maybe the statement of compatibility, I forget). Under the GSL that book would certainly not be for sale any longer, that's the difference between the OGL and GSL, for good or ill.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 05:30 PM
The Book of Erotic Fantasy (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=12195&it=1&filters=0_0_10134) is still for sale, they just had to remove the D20 logo (and maybe the statement of compatibility, I forget). Under the GSL that book would certainly not be for sale any longer, that's the difference between the OGL and GSL, for good or ill.

Which is effectively what happens if Wizards with draws t he GSL as well. Oh, you have to change the wording of some things too.

skywalker
2008-12-10, 05:32 PM
The Book of Erotic Fantasy (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=12195&it=1&filters=0_0_10134) is still for sale, they just had to remove the D20 logo (and maybe the statement of compatibility, I forget). Under the GSL that book would certainly not be for sale any longer, that's the difference between the OGL and GSL, for good or ill.

Exactly. And that's my point. For WotC, that book not being for sale anymore would be a very good thing. Because it is still on sale, in the gaming section, and it's still rather clear what rules it works with. The compatibility statement is still there.

What I was actually referring to, tho, is that when the BoEF first came out, they were going to put
"compatible withDungeons and Dragons rules"
top center on the cover. WotC had to sue to stop them from doing it. And that left it up to a judge. WotC no longer has to sue, and personally, from a business standpoint, I see that as a good thing. I don't have anything against the BoEF, but from a marketing standpoint (which I also have a stake in, when people find out I play D&D, the game's public perception certainly matters), the BoEF is a very, very bad thing.

EDIT: And while we're at it, Monte Cook confirms (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/246174-layoffs-7.html#post4573910) at least partially what I was saying in the link originally posted by RTG. The longer you're there, the longer you get paid.

Kris Strife
2008-12-10, 05:41 PM
Which is effectively what happens if Wizards with draws t he GSL as well. Oh, you have to change the wording of some things too.

From what I've read, GSL says you have to pay us to do any work. If we tell you to stop, you must shread, then burn all hard copies before running your hard drive through an MRI machine, or we sue. Then we might go ahead and take your material, publish it as ours while not paying you.

Matthew
2008-12-10, 05:42 PM
Which is effectively what happens if Wizards with draws t he GSL as well. Oh, you have to change the wording of some things too.

[edit] Sorry missed this. As I understand it, it is not the same because the BoEF is still published under the OGL (sans D20 logo); under the terms of the GSL, however, it could no longer be published using the GSL at all if WotC withdraw the right for them to do so, meaning that it would become an unlicensed product. Would that make an effective difference to the content? No idea, depends on the content.



Exactly. And that's my point. For WotC, that book not being for sale anymore would be a very good thing. Because it is still on sale, in the gaming section, and it's still rather clear what rules it works with. The compatibility statement is still there.

What I was actually referring to, tho, is that when the BoEF first came out, they were going to put
"compatible withDungeons and Dragons rules"
top center on the cover. WotC had to sue to stop them from doing it. And that left it up to a judge. WotC no longer has to sue, and personally, from a business standpoint, I see that as a good thing. I don't have anything against the BoEF, but from a marketing standpoint (which I also have a stake in, when people find out I play D&D, the game's public perception certainly matters), the BoEF is a very, very bad thing.

Sure, but it is actually a different legal stick. You don't have the same rights under the GSL as you do under the OGL. There is no court case to be made, which means you effectively cannot contest their decision even if you are right [i.e. would have won].



From what I've read, GSL says you have to pay us to do any work. If we tell you to stop, you must shread, then burn all hard copies before running your hard drive through an MRI machine, or we sue. Then we might go ahead and take your material, publish it as ours while not paying you.

I think, if that ever was the case, that was the bit that was relaxed in the reissue. I could be wrong, though.

Fax Celestis
2008-12-10, 05:43 PM
Sure, but it is actually a different legal stick. You don't have the same rights under the GSL as you do under the OGL. There is no court case to be made, which means you effectively cannot contest their decision even if you are right.

Exactly. And that scares the crap out of me.

horseboy
2008-12-10, 06:03 PM
Frankly, because of crap like the BoEF (and I'm not saying it's poorly done or that you're crap if you like it, but from Wizards' prospective, it's probably destructive to the image they're trying to create for the game), I think it was a smart move by Wizards to say "Look, this is our mechanic, and if you want to use it, you play by our rules. We're not going to have you going and printing crap and putting our symbols on it, diluting our brand. Sorry." The GSL is still far more open than the license granted by any other game company (IE: None.).
I see that used as a defense a lot. I'm kinda curious, though. How concerned with image could a company the owns the Ouija board be?

I still think it could more probably be that they realized that they don't have the chops to put out quality product for 4e, since the core mechanic is powers.
Well, from someone in a 3rd party source working on a 4th product:


Yes, I'm on the development team for AoL, and while there's nothing concrete yet, we are looking at more than just a "fluff port". However, there are a lot of restrictions imposed on us by the GSL that individuals don't have to worry about. For example: we can't CHANGE anything from 4e.
Link (http://www.earthdawn.com/forum/index.php?topic=1722.0)
If it's that hard to port over ED to 4th (especially given how close they are) that means there's a lot of contraints in the GSL>

skywalker
2008-12-10, 06:03 PM
Sure, but it is actually a different legal stick. You don't have the same rights under the GSL as you do under the OGL. There is no court case to be made, which means you effectively cannot contest their decision even if you are right [i.e. would have won].

I know.

But from Wizards' perspective (and from the perspective of someone who has to say, when asked about his hobbies, "I play D&D.") that's a good thing. The brand doesn't get diluted, the d20 (or equivalent) symbol is associated with anything WotC thinks creates a negative or "poorly made" quality for the brand, etc. Personally speaking, I look at a lot of the 3rd party d20 product at the game store and think "What a bunch of crap." And I know when somebody sees the BoEF in the gaming section at Borders (my LGS doesn't sell BoEF, but Borders does. Go figure), they know it goes a long with D&D. And the public perception changes significantly. Or let's say someone who doesn't know about D&D decides to educate themselves about it. Having that book on sale reflects negatively on the hobby for I'd say 90% of people who don't roleplay. "You have rules for that? Ugh..."

And I think it's completely within the rights of the company to say "Certain stuff we don't want you publishing, and this time, we will exercise our rights to the system." Most companies don't even offer a license in the first place. I don't understand why people were so upset over it when, really, the company is still offering better opportunities than any of the others in the first place.

And it's not like you can't homebrew for 4e. Plenty of 4e homebrew is going up in that section and there hasn't been a cease and desist order. If you're not trying to profit from the content you're creating, then they're not doing anything to you, now are they?

I guess I just don't see what's evil about saying "If you want to profit from our work (and brand), you have to play by our rules."

EDIT:
I see that used as a defense a lot. I'm kinda curious, though. How concerned with image could a company the owns the Ouija board be?

To most people I know, Ouija is a simple children's game that means nothing. A surprising number of people know how Ouija actually works. Also, as has been pointed out in this thread before, Hasbro =/= WotC, and Hasbro actually publishes it under the Parker Brothers imprint, as a company that has a reputation for marketing harmless board games. The current Ouija board is glow in the dark. D&D (and to a lesser extent, WotC in general) has a reputation deficit to contend with out of the gate.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-10, 06:12 PM
(I get this feeling from the books too - a lot of the ways that the rules don't 'fit together' properly have that rush-job feel to them, like the game mechanics were still being tweaked right down to the last second.)

That is actually a very good point. The sheer amount of errata needed within weeks of 4E's release is one of the clearest signs (but not the only one) that the game was rushed. Nor should that be surprising - many big computer games are also rushed, and the marketplace seems to find that acceptable.

Also, PersonMan, thanks for the explanation. Good points there, too.


I believe that about a decade ago when 3E got started, something like the OGL was needed to counteract the distaste large parts of the internet had for TSR (T$R) and their attitude of suing you for using the term THAC0. Also, WOTC called the shots back then; I find it plausible that Hasbro didn't want such licensing any more.

Matthew
2008-12-10, 06:17 PM
I guess I just don't see what's evil about saying "If you want to profit from our work (and brand), you have to play by our rules."

It is not evil, but it is different. The GSL gives WotC more legal clout. It is not a matter of power they already had more clearly stated, it is an actual increase in the degree of legal power they can excercise. I make no judgement as to the value of this, as that is obviously subjective. Point is, it is an increase, not just a restatement of already existing powers (which is what I understood you to be saying).



I believe that about a decade ago when 3E got started, something like the OGL was needed to counteract the distaste large parts of the internet had for TSR (T$R) and their attitude of suing you for using the term THAC0. Also, WOTC called the shots back then; I find it plausible that Hasbro didn't want such licensing any more.

You'd still get sued for using THAC0, I reckon. :smallbiggrin:

horseboy
2008-12-10, 06:43 PM
To most people I know, Ouija is a simple children's game that means nothing. A surprising number of people know how Ouija actually works. Also, as has been pointed out in this thread before, Hasbro =/= WotC, and Hasbro actually publishes it under the Parker Brothers imprint, as a company that has a reputation for marketing harmless board games. The current Ouija board is glow in the dark. D&D (and to a lesser extent, WotC in general) has a reputation deficit to contend with out of the gate.And there's a surprising number of people who know how or at least used to play D&D. I'm willing to bet more than know how a Ouija board works.

And the current Ouija is hot pink, saw it at Toys R Us, died laughing.

skywalker
2008-12-10, 09:29 PM
And there's a surprising number of people who know how or at least used to play D&D. I'm willing to bet more than know how a Ouija board works.

And the current Ouija is hot pink, saw it at Toys R Us, died laughing.

Yes, see, hot pink, not very threatening (in the traditional way, at least) at all... right?

clericwithnogod
2008-12-10, 09:44 PM
http://www.amazon.com/Eye-Tyrant-Plush-Toy-Beholder/dp/B000HE8C6I

Meh. It's an overpriced, not-really-a-beholder, knock-off from a limited run that is out of print.

Doesn't change the fact that Hasbro doesn't see enough profitibility in it to make one themselves.

In regard to the Shelly Mazzanoble thing... I can understand the whole outreach to a certain, non-stereotypical, gaming female demographic idea. But how much outreach is there in sticking it in your subscription only magazine.

It's not like female gamers are going to buy the magazine to be reached out to anymore than I'm going to buy the magazine to read where Bill Slavicek went and that people told him they liked the game while he was there. But then, I'm not buying the magazine to get a bunch of excerpts and unfinished playtest material either so I'm not the target demographic in a lot of ways. Maybe in this way I'm a grognard, but the whole "shape the game" thing is a gigantic turn off for me. I don't really want a game I like redesigned by the input of internet randoms. The errata forums, outside of the DDI errata forum, which seems to function as intended, are pretty much worthless, so having that thrown into the development mix doesn't thrill me.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-10, 10:51 PM
From what I've read, GSL says you have to pay us to do any work. If we tell you to stop, you must shread, then burn all hard copies before running your hard drive through an MRI machine, or we sue. Then we might go ahead and take your material, publish it as ours while not paying you.

I believe I have explained everything wrong with every part of that sentence besides "You have to pay us".


[edit] Sorry missed this. As I understand it, it is not the same because the BoEF is still published under the OGL (sans D20 logo); under the terms of the GSL, however, it could no longer be published using the GSL at all if WotC withdraw the right for them to do so, meaning that it would become an unlicensed product. Would that make an effective difference to the content? No idea, depends on the content.
Good sir, the GSL (Or OGL!) allows you nothing besides the wording the D20 mechanics are in, an d the D20 logo. I know it may seem weird, but nothing else besides the wording ( arguably) and copyrighted material (Such as underdark dwelling tentacle headed th ings that eat brains called Illithid) is protected in the books. I'm trying to tell you, but for perhaps the stock destruction (And no, you are not required to destroy internal information) there is no real loss.

Matthew
2008-12-11, 01:15 AM
Good sir, the GSL (Or OGL!) allows you nothing besides the wording the D20 mechanics are in, an d the D20 logo. I know it may seem weird, but nothing else besides the wording ( arguably) and copyrighted material (Such as underdark dwelling tentacle headed th ings that eat brains called Illithid) is protected in the books. I'm trying to tell you, but for perhaps the stock destruction (And no, you are not required to destroy internal information) there is no real loss.

As things currently stand, the OGL allows you to make use of terms such as "hit dice" and "saving throw" with no legal complications via the SRD. By agreeing to use the OGL/SRD you agree not to challenge WotC claims to ownership of the terms that it includes (whatever they might be). Certain items are witheld from this arrangement, Beholders, Illithids, Bullywugs, Carrion Crawlers and so on, because WotC has a much clearer ownership of those terms in the context of RPGs (a virtually uncontestable one, in fact). The rules themselves cannot be copyrighted, but many other items included in the SRD are much more ambiguous (such as certain monster names, spell names, magic items, their precise relation to the rules and context of the game).

The GSL is a separate arrangement that cannot be combined with the OGL/SRD that allows publishers to publish and reference fourth edition material on a similar (but more limited) pattern. If WotC choose not to allow you to use this license, you can still publish material on the model that Kenzer & Company recently did (and did before their exclusive license with WotC for AD&D), but exactly how far you can go will depend on your understanding of intellectual property law (easier for Kenzer, because the man himself was an IP lawyer).

The difference is that if I publish something under the OGL I have a license to use the terms it includes via the SRD, though I can no longer denote compatibility with D&D or use the D20 logo. If I publish something under the GSL and WotC choose to revoke that license to me, then I am in a similar position to David Kenzer, but without his legal education. Essentially, I must either decide for myself or take legal advice as to what must be removed from my product and what can stay. There are always risks, of course, but the situation is much clearer (for the layman) when using the OGL then when publishing unlicensed D20/4e material.

In short, I do not agree with you that the OGL authorises use of only the wording of the SRD, it allows the use of terms that were originally copyrighted by TSR (and still are under copyright).

RPGuru1331
2008-12-11, 03:02 AM
I will certainly grant that the ability of a laymen is compromised in this, if, you know, they don't actually g et some consultation. Or you could just invent new terms wholecloth. For instance, if you used "Level" instead of every instance of Hit Dice, and it comes to very nearly the same thing anyway. Very nearly all game terms that you could contest are pretty easy to change.

Now, you may have a legitimacy problem, but then, if you were using someone else's mechanics, you usually would anyway, now wouldn't you?

Matthew
2008-12-11, 03:41 AM
Of course, and the wrongs and rights of the situation are not really in question. The only subject of debate is whether the OGL/SRD gives you a safer legal footing to produce D20/3e compatible material than having no license to produce D20/4e material. I would argue that you are generally safer in the former case than in the latter, unless you happen to be well schooled in IP law. Of course, all this is theoretical and untested, which is half the problem.

The trade off is quite amusing:

OGL/SRD: Cannot denote compatibility, but can use all the licensed terms
No License: Can denote compatibility, but cannot use all the licensed terms

The mid to late nineties AD&D modules Kenzer & Company produced denoted compatibility with AD&D, Role Master, and Hack Master (still fictional at that time). The only terminology change I recall off hand was the replacing of "hit points" with "hits to kill", otherwise they were perfectly servicable.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-11, 03:49 AM
Of course, all this is theoretical and untested, which is half the problem.
I would not want to be the one to test it, certainly. Th at's going to be expensive. But , we're IN AMERICA. SLAPPs are.. unamusing things.

Oh lord. If you weren 't American, you could do it easily. Th e OGL specifies an American court of law, bu t you clearly are not following the OGL, and they're levelling suit against you..


The trade off is quite amusing:

OGL/SRD: Cannot denote compatibility, but can use all the licensed terms
No License: Can denote compatibility, but cannot use all the licensed terms
You can't even be compatible, really, since to be so, you would have to acknowledge it. It is kinda amusing.


The mid to late nineties AD&D modules Kenzer & Company produced denoted compatibility with AD&D, Role Master, and Hack Master (still fictional at that time). The only terminology change I recall off hand was the replacing of "hit points" with "hits to kill", otherwise they were perfectly servicable.

REALLY? An Industry Standard? Well.. I don't know wha tto say about that, actu ally. I would probably just bring in my RPG collection. "There. Hit Points. Not a defended trademark of Dungeons and Dragons, but an industry s tandard that a generation has grown up with in a w ide variety of games." Heck, in 2 years, it'll actually have been 25 years :smalltongue:

V: Exactly

InaVegt
2008-12-11, 03:52 AM
Yeah, things like BAB and Hit Dice are more easily defensible than level and hit points, because if those last two were meant to be trademarks, they've not been defended nearly enough, making them legally powerless.

Matthew
2008-12-11, 04:30 AM
REALLY? An Industry Standard? Well.. I don't know wha tto say about that, actu ally. I would probably just bring in my RPG collection. "There. Hit Points. Not a defended copyright of Dungeons and Dragons, but an industry s tandard that a generation has grown up with in a w ide variety of games." Heck, in 2 years, it'll actually have been 25 years :smalltongue:

Yup, and this is why I don't fancy my chances as a layman . This is a typical stat block from one of the modules:



Lizard Men (10): AL N; AR 4; MV 6 Sw 12; HD 2+1; HTK 12; THAC0 19; #AT 1; DMG by weapon; SZ M (7' tall); ML 14; EP 65; armed with barbed darts (1d4 damage), clubs (2d4 damage), and shields.

Looks like "AC" was replaced with "AR" and "XP" with "EP". Not sure what "ML" is off the top of my head, might be related to [I]Role Master (but nothing springs to mind). Even when I first acquired these modules (back before I ever heard of D20/3e or the OGL/SRD) I found the HTK change baffling from a common sense point of view.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-11, 04:36 AM
Yup, and this is why I don't fancy my chances as a layman . This is a typical stat block from one of the modules:
Well, to my knowledge, it isn't standard in Tabletop games. It's possible he act ually didn't realize how MUCH h it points has degraded as a defensible trademark. Also, he had 10 less years of absolute rape of the term as a trademark to rely on.



Looks like "AC" was replaced with "AR" and "XP" with "EP". Not sure what "ML" is off the top of my head, might be related to [I]Role Master. Even when I first acquired these modules (back before I ever heard of D20/3e or the OGL/SRD) I found the HTK change baffling from a common sense point of view.

AC is more def ensible. IT' s not exclusive, but it is not as widespread. XP is indefensible, as is Exp (I wou ld use Exp. Again. Collection, obvious industry standard). I have no idea w hat any of th at statblock means, bu t that says nothing. Statblocks are always gibberish when you don't read the system th ey're derived from exactly.

TSGames
2008-12-11, 04:57 AM
I doubt that the line would go belly up. I believe that another company would purchase it with the belief that they could make it leaner and more profitable.
This seems true.

However, if the DnD line did go belly up... I'd throw a party. <---Seriously

Matthew
2008-12-11, 05:13 AM
Well, to my knowledge, it isn't standard in Tabletop games. It's possible he act ually didn't realize how MUCH h it points has degraded as a defensible trademark. Also, he had 10 less years of absolute rape of the term as a trademark to rely on.

The root of my surprise was that he chose to change "HP" to "HTK", but leave "HD" as is, which is surely the more identifiable D&Dism. My guess is that it is because Role Master mainly uses "Hits", making "Hits to Kill" a "bridging" term.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-11, 05:28 AM
The root of my surprise was that he chose to change "HP" to "HTK", but leave "HD" as is, which is surely the more identifiable D&Dism. My guess is that it is because Role Master mainly uses "Hits", making "Hits to Kill" a "bridging" term.
And he's got THAC0 there :smallconfused:

WEll, I'm not quite a lay men, but if he's an IP lawyer, he clearly knows something I don't, I'll say that. Still, Bridging Term seems likely. I have absolutely zilch experience with the -Master games, since they seem well outside my realm of.. well, caring.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-11, 05:48 AM
Not sure what "ML" is off the top of my head,

Morale level.

Darrin
2008-12-11, 08:17 AM
I would say the chance of that is almost ZERO. It just doesn't seem like something a company would do.

Actually closer to 100%. I believe it's called "Pathfinder".

Darrin
2008-12-11, 08:45 AM
Well, to my knowledge, it isn't standard in Tabletop games. It's possible he act ually didn't realize how MUCH h it points has degraded as a defensible trademark. Also, he had 10 less years of absolute rape of the term as a trademark to rely on.


I don't believe terms such as "THAC0" or "hit points" were ever trademarked. TSR did sue Mayfair over City State of the Overlord and the Role Aids line of products, but mostly it was over the "compatability" statement, the "AD&D" trademark, and using Gary Gygax's name. I believe they settled out of court and TSR eventually bought the Role Aids line from Mayfair.

I'm not sure any RPG company has tried to trademark specific terms or mechanics (and yes, I'm deliberately ignoring WotC's TCG patent for the moment... but patent law is different from trademark and copyright). It's certainly never been tested in court. Given the amount of people publicly sharing rules and mechanics for similar games even before TSR was incorporated, it would be a really, *really* difficult if not impossible case to enforce trademark protection, particularly if you never bothered to register the trademark.

But Intellectual Property law has some absolutely huge grey areas, in particular "derivative works". It would be very easy to go after another company using similar terms and mechanics and argue their work is a derivative of your own. However, I don't think any company has ever had the cojones to really try that in court.

mikeejimbo
2008-12-11, 08:58 AM
It's entirely possible the 3.5 line could be put back into main production, with 4E bringing in players who become dissatisfied and turn to WotC's better offerings.

Reminds me of Coca-Cola, and "New Coke."

Matthew
2008-12-11, 11:49 AM
Morale level.

Ah yes, that must be it; strange that they would list mindless undead as having a morale rating, but I have seen stranger!



I don't believe terms such as "THAC0" or "hit points" were ever trademarked. TSR did sue Mayfair over City State of the Overlord and the Role Aids line of products, but mostly it was over the "compatability" statement, the "AD&D" trademark, and using Gary Gygax's name. I believe they settled out of court and TSR eventually bought the Role Aids line from Mayfair.

I'm not sure any RPG company has tried to trademark specific terms or mechanics (and yes, I'm deliberately ignoring WotC's TCG patent for the moment... but patent law is different from trademark and copyright). It's certainly never been tested in court. Given the amount of people publicly sharing rules and mechanics for similar games even before TSR was incorporated, it would be a really, *really* difficult if not impossible case to enforce trademark protection, particularly if you never bothered to register the trademark.

I believe you are correct. A few things are specifically trademarked:

"Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, AD&D, Dungeon Master, Dragon, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft are registered trademarks of TSR, Inc. Dungeon Master, DM, and the TSR Logo are trademarks owned by TSR, Inc"

Later, and as they were produced, Birthright, Al-Qadim, etcetera were also added. As far as I know, stuff like Hit Dice, Hit Points, THAC0, and the like are not specifically trademarked, though there is some sort of ownership claim to them in the context of D&D as intellectual property.



But Intellectual Property law has some absolutely huge grey areas, in particular "derivative works". It would be very easy to go after another company using similar terms and mechanics and argue their work is a derivative of your own. However, I don't think any company has ever had the cojones to really try that in court.

As I understand it, TSR threatened a lot of people on the grounds of derivation (including fan works), but I know of no case in which they actually brought proceedings and were successful. That said, they did take legal action against New Infinities Productions (Gary Gygax's post TSR company) over a verbal agreement to publish something owned by TSR, and they attempted to shut down his Dangerous Journey's RPG (earlier entitled Dangerous Dimensions); the latter case was not successful, but was settled by TSR's purchase of the rights to the game. I don't know if they played the derivation card in either of those two cases.

Looking at the Kenzer & Company modules, it seems likely that there is some hocus pocus going on with regard to defend against derivation accusations (hence the declaration of compatibility with Role Master). I won't pretend to understand it, though!

BillyJimBoBob
2008-12-11, 11:58 AM
Two words: Lorraine Williams (http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?int_dnd30_Sean). She openly commented that gamers were "beneath her".

*Yes, I know she wasn't WotC, but the concept stands. There really are (or at least, were) people in the industry that feel that way.

As I have repeatedly said in the past, there are (at least) 2 ways to run a company to make a profit:

1.) Build and harvest a loyal fanbase by treating them with respect.

2.) Treat your fans like schmucks to be fleeced at every opportunity.

Obviously, you and I don't see eye-to-eye on which category WotC falls into. :smallsmile:

To be fair to Lorraine Williams, your link goes to an interview in which she is not a participant. So you have only hearsay evidence that she commented that gamers were beneath her.

But regardless of her position on gamers, you don't have to like either your product or your customers to be a good business manager. And likewise, you can love your product and your customers and be a horrible business manager.

I've seen several gaming stores which were run by avid gamers who were very involved with their customers and connected well with them close down after a short run or even a decade of decent success. It's a slender margin business and it does take a good business sense to be successful.

Your "(at least)" hedges your position nicely, though. It leaves open every single point on the scale between your two extreme examples. I tend to think that a successful gaming company needs to be run like your example 1), but also needs to have a smart management willing to make the decisions necessary to keep the company going in the right financial direction. Even if that pisses off some of the customer base. You can't please all of the people all of the time (need I use 4e as a fantastic example of his truism?), but you'll please no one if you go out of business. Laying people off, even well respected names in the industry, is just another part of this needed business management which does not preclude continuing to build and harvest a loyal fan base through respect.

To answer the hypothetical of the OP, if WotC/Hasbro was closed tomorrow it wouldn't impact my gaming group at all. Any of the gang who was missing a book and decided they wanted to own it "after the fall" could find it on eBay or Amazon, and we have never been splat book happy in any edition, keeping things pretty core with perhaps some content from a few splat books and some house rules.

Reinforcements
2008-12-11, 01:14 PM
Sure is a lot of schadenfreude 'round here.

DM Raven
2008-12-11, 03:44 PM
PnP RPGs are just not that profitable. Even one like D&D, which probably makes the most money out of them, doesn't really turn that great of a profit. Fourth Edition seems to be doing better than third edition, but the truth is that most people just buy one core Player's Handbook and never spend any more money on the hobby. Hell, getting all the players in my group to get their own books was like pulling teeth and I had players leave my game when I put my foot down about it.

The truth is, many people who play PnP RPGs are cheap. One of the big draws of PnP RPGS is that you can get into one and keep having fun with it and you don't need a huge monitary investment to keep your hobby going. And while this may seem like a good thing, it means that the people who support and update the game you play may go under then you have to watch as the game you loved slowly fades into oblivion.

I very much doubt WOTC will drop D&D or that WOTC will go under, though they may have to change the D&D business model if they want to turn a profit on their investment.

horseboy
2008-12-11, 05:04 PM
Looks like "AC" was replaced with "AR" and "XP" with "EP". Not sure what "ML" is off the top of my head, might be related to Role Master (but nothing springs to mind). Even when I first acquired these modules (back before I ever heard of D20/3e or the OGL/SRD) I found the HTK change baffling from a common sense point of view.
EP is Hackmaster's version of XP.

The root of my surprise was that he chose to change "HP" to "HTK", but leave "HD" as is, which is surely the more identifiable D&Dism. My guess is that it is because Role Master mainly uses "Hits", making "Hits to Kill" a "bridging" term.Rolemaster also tends to have 2-3x the hits as a D&D monster (well prior to 4th). Hence the "...round down if benevolence amuses you." line in Arms Law. So I'm guessing it's also a Hackmaster term.
You know, White Dwarf used to do this stuff WWAAAAAAAYY back. Usually by posting two stat blocks, one AD&D, one Rolemaster.

Oslecamo
2008-12-11, 05:09 PM
I very much doubt WOTC will drop D&D or that WOTC will go under, though they may have to change the D&D business model if they want to turn a profit on their investment.

Cough D&D insider monthly fee cough.

It worked for Wow after all. Blizzard still milking the players every month.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-11, 05:19 PM
Hell, getting all the players in my group to get their own books was like pulling teeth and I had players leave my game when I put my foot down about it.

Why do you care if your players own the rulebooks? As long as they know what they're doing and got a feasible build, I fail to see why there should be six copies of the PHB (let alone of anything else) on a gaming session.

Lord Tataraus
2008-12-11, 06:03 PM
Why do you care if your players own the rulebooks? As long as they know what they're doing and got a feasible build, I fail to see why there should be six copies of the PHB (let alone of anything else) on a gaming session.

Ditto on that, I don't require everyone to have the needed books for any system. In fact, D&D is the only system the group has more than 1 copy of any book for. Additionally, some systems I don't allow the players to have all the books (such as for nWoD or Paranoia) because metagaming could break the mood of the game. I do encourage my players to read the core books and know the system, but that's about it. Even when I was still in high school we only had one copy of every book except the PHB and we just traded around the others to make our builds and read up on the new stuff.

ericgrau
2008-12-11, 08:24 PM
As a Brand Name, the use of the DnD logo has profit potential. Some company would snap up the rights, just to get the name. The resulting game might not share any resemblance to what we already have, but it should still exist.

That would be 4e, after the massive layoffs.

Matthew
2008-12-11, 08:36 PM
EP is Hackmaster's version of XP.

Actually, that is a good point. Whilst Hack Master itself did not exist when these games were publsihed, "EPs" were often referred to in the KotDT comic strips, where Hack Master was allegedly played.



Rolemaster also tends to have 2-3x the hits as a D&D monster (well prior to 4th). Hence the "...round down if benevolence amuses you." line in Arms Law. So I'm guessing it's also a Hackmaster term.

Indeed, despite claims to be compatible with RM, I don't really see much compatibility. I don't think this one is a Hack Master term, though (in fact I know it is not), "AR" and "HTK" arealmost certainly fabrications for the product.



You know, White Dwarf used to do this stuff WWAAAAAAAYY back. Usually by posting two stat blocks, one AD&D, one Rolemaster.

True, but was that before or after they got out of bed with TSR? [Games Workshop in the late seventies were publishingd and distributing "British" versions of Holmes BD&D (with new art! (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=20401)) for TSR]. I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.

Skaven
2008-12-11, 09:13 PM
"*sigh* times are tough..."

I miss RPG world.

And in regard to the thread: that is truly awful.. weeks before christmas? *sigh*

Couldn't they have waited a few weeks..? terrible terrible people.

Thurbane
2008-12-11, 09:42 PM
To be fair to Lorraine Williams, your link goes to an interview in which she is not a participant. So you have only hearsay evidence that she commented that gamers were beneath her.
Yes, I was looking for a better link, that one isn't particularly great. My Google-fu failed me. I will try to find a better one, but in reality, all are going to be hearsay - I doubt I'll find a Lorraine Williams blog where she puts it in black and white. :smallsmile:

But regardless of her position on gamers, you don't have to like either your product or your customers to be a good business manager. And likewise, you can love your product and your customers and be a horrible business manager.

I've seen several gaming stores which were run by avid gamers who were very involved with their customers and connected well with them close down after a short run or even a decade of decent success. It's a slender margin business and it does take a good business sense to be successful.
Totally agreed.

Your "(at least)" hedges your position nicely, though. It leaves open every single point on the scale between your two extreme examples.
Ah yes, but did you read the statement it was a reply to?

Listen up, bub. Look at the jobs they're doing. As a rule, game makers don't get paid that much. It's a job you do because you enjoy it. There really is nobody, and I mean NOBODY, at the office, that says, "I hate the fans and want to piss them off", or even "The fans don't matter". The fans are the lifeblood. They may or may not be out of touch with the fanbase, but they honestly don't not-care.
Pretty absolute, huh? In that context, my "at least" stands. :smallwink:

I tend to think that a successful gaming company needs to be run like your example 1), but also needs to have a smart management willing to make the decisions necessary to keep the company going in the right financial direction. Even if that pisses off some of the customer base. You can't please all of the people all of the time (need I use 4e as a fantastic example of his truism?), but you'll please no one if you go out of business. Laying people off, even well respected names in the industry, is just another part of this needed business management which does not preclude continuing to build and harvest a loyal fan base through respect.
True. Reputation is an important part of any business, though. You have to be careful about how your company and it's decisions are perceived.

Behold_the_Void
2008-12-11, 10:08 PM
I miss RPG world.

And in regard to the thread: that is truly awful.. weeks before christmas? *sigh*

Couldn't they have waited a few weeks..? terrible terrible people.

I think the way it works is it's judged by Black Friday sales. If the company isn't doing so well come Black Friday panic mode ensues and things get cut. I work for a retail grocery chain, and even though our store is doing fine, corporate has still been slashing hours across the board.

horseboy
2008-12-11, 10:09 PM
True, but was that before or after they got out of bed with TSR? [Games Workshop in the late seventies were publishingd and distributing "British" versions of Holmes BD&D (with new art! (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=20401)) for TSR]. I don't know, but it would be interesting to find out.hard to say, I bought them around '95 from some guy's collection. So I don't know for sure when the came out, but I do know Judge Dredd was on the cover. So it was also back when GW was doing JD.

clericwithnogod
2008-12-12, 03:41 AM
Cough D&D insider monthly fee cough.

It worked for Wow after all. Blizzard still milking the players every month.

Unless DND Insider starts providing a way to play the game whenever a subscriber feels like logging on, they aren't the same thing.

People pay Blizzard to play the game, not to get the tools to play it.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-12, 05:26 AM
Cough D&D insider monthly fee cough.

It worked for Wow after all. Blizzard still milking the players every month.

You don't know what you're talking about if you legitimately think an MMO 'milks' its players.


Pretty absolute, huh? In that context, my "at least" stands.
I suppose you've forgotten, but you made an equally absolute statement that they don't care.

Oh wait. :)
Now when I'm called on my post, I can say I was 'just kidding'.

Knaight
2008-12-12, 07:56 AM
Some MMOs charge as much as a normal game to start, then charge per month way more than would be necessary to cover expenses, even after making a lot of money originally, and do milk their players, with new content and patches coming only in expansion packs which players have to buy. Granted WoW isn't one of those, as blizzard is really good about releasing free stuff with games as they go on, and don't have a history of charging for patches.

DM Raven
2008-12-12, 12:36 PM
Why do you care if your players own the rulebooks? As long as they know what they're doing and got a feasible build, I fail to see why there should be six copies of the PHB (let alone of anything else) on a gaming session.

I feel that $30 for a book is a small investment to make for the hours of enjoyment we will get out of gaming. I also feel that if one person can pay the $30 to get their own book, it's only fair that other people do so. I don't force people to come into my games with a book, but if they are enjoying themselves and want to keep playing, I ask them to pick up their own book a few months in. Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars you would spend on any other hobby, is $30 really that much to ask?

Kurald Galain
2008-12-12, 12:43 PM
Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars you would spend on any other hobby, is $30 really that much to ask?
Well, considering there's dozens of free RPGs on the market...

I mean, sure, if a player really wants to play D&D in particular, it makes sense for them to buy a book. On the other hand, if a player just wants to play whatever RPG is available, and is just doing D&D because that's what other people want, it seems unfair to charge them for what isn't their choice.

(and before you ask, yes, I bought and own about 40 RPG books on my shelf)

DM Raven
2008-12-12, 12:50 PM
And if the D&D 4th Edition books were free I wouldn't mind people just grabbing them for free...but since they aren't people need to pay for them and bring them to my games. I think it's a reasonable request...

Heliomance
2008-12-12, 01:02 PM
I feel that $30 for a book is a small investment to make for the hours of enjoyment we will get out of gaming. I also feel that if one person can pay the $30 to get their own book, it's only fair that other people do so. I don't force people to come into my games with a book, but if they are enjoying themselves and want to keep playing, I ask them to pick up their own book a few months in. Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars you would spend on any other hobby, is $30 really that much to ask?

I'd never spend hundreds of dollars on any hobby, let alone thousands. I have to say, I'd have been one of the players that left. Some people just can't afford to buy the gaming books - they're sodding expensive. This side of the pond, I think £25 is about average, and there's no way I'm paying that much for it. I'm a student, I have limited amounts of money.

Protip: If non-problem players leave your game because of a ruling you make, you're doing it wrong.

DM Raven
2008-12-12, 01:55 PM
I'd never spend hundreds of dollars on any hobby, let alone thousands. I have to say, I'd have been one of the players that left. Some people just can't afford to buy the gaming books - they're sodding expensive. This side of the pond, I think £25 is about average, and there's no way I'm paying that much for it. I'm a student, I have limited amounts of money.

Protip: If non-problem players leave your game because of a ruling you make, you're doing it wrong.

Yet you expect people to develope, expand, and maintain your hobby for free? You do know that it costs a lot of money to write and print books. You have to pay your writers, your artists, your testers, publishing, advertising, and many other departments to have your system printed and sold. Do you think these books and game systems just magically appear. Do you think these people toil and put hard work into these things just for the privilage of entertaining you. What entitles you to all this free entertainment?

Passion for gaming is one reason people create game systems, but another reason is that they want to make a living off of it. It's hard work making these things and the people who do it should be paid.

As for the pro-tip, reasonable "non-problem" (whatever that means) players disagree with rules all the time. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the system, it just means that particular system isn't for you. There is no one almighty gaming system out there that will entertain everyone.

skywalker
2008-12-12, 01:57 PM
*A bunch of smart stuff*

That was really smart. The part about how D&D is the most profitable, but that doesn't mean much in the world of RPGs, cannot be overlooked. It's a big deal.


I think the way it works is it's judged by Black Friday sales. If the company isn't doing so well come Black Friday panic mode ensues and things get cut. I work for a retail grocery chain, and even though our store is doing fine, corporate has still been slashing hours across the board.

I think it's a bit different in the RPG publishing business. Mainly in that you know well before Black Friday how many books you've sold for Black Friday. Unless Wizards has some outlet stores somewhere that I don't know about, I'm pretty sure you buy your D&D books like you buy your beer: from a store, who bought them from a distributor, who bought them from Wizards.

In your example, this situation would be more like Nabisco laying people off than your company cutting hours.

My guess is, they had underwhelming sales in the months before Black Friday, which is really their "Christmas Shopping Season." By the first couple days of December, they know how they've done for the year.

I'm friendly with the manager at my LGS, and he always talks about how they get so much stuff the shelves are crammed in late fall, and then they get very little product throughout the rest of the year and the store slowly empties.

Also, my family was in the video rental business (like Blockbuster). So I'm intimately aware of the way the luxury business works. When economic times are good, we make a lot more profit than companies like Behold the Void's. But when times are hard, we make almost zero. By contrast, Behold the Void's still making money, he may have his hours cut, but he's not getting fired (at least I hope). Because people still need food. This leads to a sort of squirrel psychology that is very antithetical to the business you're in, because you're actively encouraging people to spend their money on luxuries now, whereas you yourself need to be saving a little more for the future/times when nobody rents movies (freaking work/school!).

I think another thing that happened to WotC is, they started planning/developing/early marketing in the middle of a boom time. By the time they actually released the product, the economy had performed a complete 180 on them. These people are the unfortunate first ones to suffer from it. I think there may be more.

Honestly, if we really are in "the worst crisis since The Depression," I'd be surprised if the gaming industry doesn't suffer severely with heavy casualties. It's a niche market that caters to people who tend to have little disposable income to begin with (like we've been discussing) and who tend to have cuttable jobs. If every company currently in business makes it thru this, I will be incredibly surprised. It might be that since WotC happened to make a big play right as the tables were turning, they may lose big and not make it. I think it's more likely for one of the smaller players to quietly disappear, tho. Not anybody like White Wolf or SJG, they make their living by playing small. Yes, you only win small, but you only lose small too. They're not sturdy enough for the chances of losing big. Maybe WotC is. But it's not their fault they made a big play while the dice were hot and then found them inexplicably cool when they hit the table.

DM Raven
2008-12-12, 02:07 PM
That was really smart. The part about how D&D is the most profitable, but that doesn't mean much in the world of RPGs, cannot be overlooked. It's a big deal.

I guess I'm confused...big deal in what way?

Kurald Galain
2008-12-12, 02:09 PM
Do you think these people toil and put hard work into these things just for the privilage of entertaining you. What entitles you to all this free entertainment?
This. (http://www.homebrew.net/games/) Over a hundred examples of toil and hard work done for free, just for the "privilege of entertaining people".

DM Raven
2008-12-12, 02:19 PM
This. (http://www.homebrew.net/games/) Over a hundred examples of toil and hard work done for free, just for the "privilege of entertaining people".

I very much doubt any of those game developers would turn away a paycheck for their work if one was offered. More than likely they were developing their system in the hope that is would get noticed and catch on. If nothing else, it's something to put in your resume.

So you don't feel that PnP gaming should be a profitable industry? You don't think that any of the defunct RPGs on the site wanted to be recognized and turned into a money-making game that people could enjoy?

Kurald Galain
2008-12-12, 02:41 PM
More than likely they were developing their system in the hope that is would get noticed and catch on. If nothing else, it's something to put in your resume.
So tell me, have you asked all of them? Any of them? Or are you just assuming they conveniently hold the same opinion that you do?

RPGuru1331
2008-12-12, 02:47 PM
Some MMOs charge as much as a normal game to start, then charge per month way more than would be necessary to cover expenses, even after making a lot of money originally, and do milk their players, with new content and patches coming only in expansion packs which players have to buy. Granted WoW isn't one of those, as blizzard is really good about releasing free stuff with games as they go on, and don't have a history of charging for patches.

Which ones? To my knowledge, everyone charges the same 15 bucks, if they charge anything.



So tell me, have you asked all of them? Any of them? Or are you just assuming they conveniently hold the same opinion that you do?
It's not an assumption, dude. Anyone who wants to do their work full time wa nts to get paid for it; That's the only way to do it if you're not independently fabulously wealthy. People have bills to pay.

Erom
2008-12-12, 03:02 PM
I dunno, a lot of people out there are really willing to pour they're heart and soul into something and then give it away for free. See open source software development. And sure, that's not a full time job for too many people out there, but many hands, light work and all that. You really think given the size of the RPG community you couldn't crowdsource a game and get it developed for free? I think all you would have to do is sift through the various homebrew section on forums like this and package up the best (balance and innovation considered) and you would be done pretty quickly.

DM Raven
2008-12-12, 03:27 PM
So tell me, have you asked all of them? Any of them? Or are you just assuming they conveniently hold the same opinion that you do?

All I'm saying is that if game developers do a good job making games that people like to play, they should get some sort of compensation for their time and effort. As a DM, I spend hours and hours making worlds and stories for people to be entertained. I don't mind doing this for friends and family because these are people I love and I enjoy seeing them entertained.

Some people like designing game systems just for the sake of designing them, there is nothing wrong with that. But there is also nothing wrong with getting paid for work you put in. Artists need to make a living, and they can't do that without money...some people find the time to write up rule systems and work other jobs for a living. Some people want to make a living off of designing and doing things they love.

Design requires time, money, and work...lots of work. If you want to make bad systems you could try to throw something togethar quickly. But making something good and functional takes time.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-12, 08:40 PM
I dunno, a lot of people out there are really willing to pour they're heart and soul into something and then give it away for free. See open source software development. And sure, that's not a full time job for too many people out there, but many hands, light work and all that. You really think given the size of the RPG community you couldn't crowdsource a game and get it developed for free? I think all you would have to do is sift through the various homebrew section on forums like this and package up the best (balance and innovation considered) and you would be done pretty quickly.

Isn't the trick that both of those things are done strictly as hobbies, and not as one's job?

horseboy
2008-12-12, 08:48 PM
I think it's a bit different in the RPG publishing business. Mainly in that you know well before Black Friday how many books you've sold for Black Friday. Unless Wizards has some outlet stores somewhere that I don't know about, I'm pretty sure you buy your D&D books like you buy your beer: from a store, who bought them from a distributor, who bought them from Wizards.
So they all did close then? I noticed the one in Arundel Mills closed.

clericwithnogod
2008-12-12, 08:57 PM
I feel that $30 for a book is a small investment to make for the hours of enjoyment we will get out of gaming. I also feel that if one person can pay the $30 to get their own book, it's only fair that other people do so. I don't force people to come into my games with a book, but if they are enjoying themselves and want to keep playing, I ask them to pick up their own book a few months in. Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars you would spend on any other hobby, is $30 really that much to ask?

Yes. No way I'd play with a DM that did that to someone. Ever.

mikeejimbo
2008-12-12, 09:21 PM
Yes. No way I'd play with a DM that did that to someone. Ever.

Yeah, my group just makes fun of you until you give into peer pressure. Much more humane that way.

ericgrau
2008-12-12, 10:05 PM
$30 is almost nothing compared to the time you put in. People really undervalue their time. If you have that much time to blow, get a part time minimum wage job for a summer and say "Holy cow, all this worthless time got me hundreds of dollars." I also see people who think their time has almost unlimited worth, depending on the context. Basically people just need to get real and give this topic a smidgen of personal thought.

clericwithnogod
2008-12-13, 01:05 AM
Yeah, my group just makes fun of you until you give into peer pressure. Much more humane that way.

Not many people would lower themselves to a point where peer pressure from such a group would be a possibility.

skywalker
2008-12-13, 02:35 AM
So they all did close then? I noticed the one in Arundel Mills closed.

I had no idea.

I actually never knew of any in the first place, so I was speaking completely out of turn.

Does anybody know if they do?


Not many people would lower themselves to a point where peer pressure from such a group would be a possibility.

Plenty of people would, actually. RPG groups are just like other friend groups.

Lord Tataraus
2008-12-13, 04:10 PM
I feel that $30 for a book is a small investment to make for the hours of enjoyment we will get out of gaming. I also feel that if one person can pay the $30 to get their own book, it's only fair that other people do so. I don't force people to come into my games with a book, but if they are enjoying themselves and want to keep playing, I ask them to pick up their own book a few months in. Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars you would spend on any other hobby, is $30 really that much to ask?

So if you friend doesn't have $30, his parents are in debt and earning just enough to put some food on the table and pay the credit bill you kick him out? Even if it's not that extreme not everyone has that $30 to spend. Especially when we are talking about something that is used by a group. If you have a video game, say Halo 3, does that mean your friend should buy Halo 3 as well for him to come over and play it with you? Even if you want him to practice more can't you just lend him the game for a week or two? How about this, buy books as a group. I've done it before, everyone chips in an equal amount and you get a single copy for the group that you pass between yourselves.

Thurbane
2008-12-13, 11:44 PM
I suppose you've forgotten, but you made an equally absolute statement that they don't care.

Oh wait. :)
Now when I'm called on my post, I can say I was 'just kidding'.
You said no such person exists in gaming. I gave an example. I'm not sure I understand the problem?

TempusCCK
2008-12-14, 05:56 AM
I think WotC needs to realize that D&D is a game that people will buy a few books for, and then go at it on their own. I mean, the majority of people who play aren't the crazed powergamers who are going to keep buying book after book after book. (One would argue that these are the better players anyway)

I love D&D and tabletop games altogether because I don't need to pay for alot of stuff, hell, I can get the basic stuff online and wing it from there. People just looking to game casually with friends and hang out cannot be milked.

So in sort, the solution to this is "make less books." Really, nobody cares, and in case you haven't noticed, many of these books are really REALLY easy to come by in digital format. So you make a book expecting the really RAW-thirsty types to pay a bunch for it, and half of buy it, the other half download it off of the internet.

I would rather have less books than a ton of useless powergamery books. Sure, some splat is nice, but I'm sure the cost to create, oh, say Monster Manual V was probably not made up in sales, not to mention, that with each of these books that come out, it feels more and more like they just want to keep cashing in on the D&D name, I am not a money tree, please do not assume that I want or need your multitude of crummy books, I came up with better things that what's inside of them myself.

KnightDisciple
2008-12-14, 06:04 AM
Define "less books", though.

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-14, 07:01 AM
They should have out out that 3.5 Epic Manual we wanted.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-14, 07:31 AM
You said no such person exists in gaming. I gave an example. I'm not sure I understand the problem?

"Nobody in WotC cares about the fans :D" was your post I responded to, dude. Equally absolute. Quit hiding behind my respo nse to you and acknowledge what I was responding to.



I think WotC needs to realize that D&D is a game that people will buy a few books for, and then go at it on their own. I mean, the majority of people who play aren't the crazed powergamers who are going to keep buying book after book after book. (One would argue that these are the better players anyway)
Is th at true? I mean , I've actual ly seen that commonly replicated in real life. Granted, the local stores I' ve been to have been pure.. well not n ecessarily powergamers, but people with a wargamer attitude to tabletop games. So, I guess what I'm asking is, are there statistics on this t hat are reliable?

Renegade Paladin
2008-12-14, 08:16 AM
Welcome to recession. The only surprise is that it didn't happen sooner.

KKL
2008-12-14, 08:18 AM
I think WotC needs to realize that D&D is a game that people will buy a few books for, and then go at it on their own. I mean, the majority of people who play aren't the crazed powergamers who are going to keep buying book after book after book. (One would argue that these are the better players anyway)

Yes, because only powergamers buy new books and want new things in their RPGs if the opportunity presents itself. True roleplayers stick only to core.

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-14, 09:31 AM
That was sarcasm right?

horseboy
2008-12-14, 01:12 PM
Yes, because only powergamers buy new books and want new things in their RPGs if the opportunity presents itself. True roleplayers stick only to core.

I loled. Of course, we're talking about WotC, so their splats really aren't good for much more...

TempusCCK
2008-12-14, 03:52 PM
Yes, because only powergamers buy new books and want new things in their RPGs if the opportunity presents itself. True roleplayers stick only to core.

Mmm, the perfect example is Complete Champion, which has some of the cheesiest stuff known to man. It's a pretty common theme for 3.5 that the later the books came out the cheesier the stuff became. Lion Totem Barb, Devotions, the whole shebang. Complete mage with the Reserve Feats... mm mm.

I said that I like some splat, but you can't deny that people who don't give a crap about powergaming are more likely going to just make up their own rules than go out and buy a brand new book on the subject.

Thurbane
2008-12-14, 06:31 PM
"Nobody in WotC cares about the fans :D" was your post I responded to, dude. Equally absolute. Quit hiding behind my respo nse to you and acknowledge what I was responding to.
I'm not "hiding" behind anything. Please provide a quote from myself to back up what you are claiming I said. It's not hard, there's only six pages in the thread. :smallwink:

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-15, 12:04 AM
Mmm, the perfect example is Complete Champion, which has some of the cheesiest stuff known to man. It's a pretty common theme for 3.5 that the later the books came out the cheesier the stuff became. Lion Totem Barb, Devotions, the whole shebang. Complete mage with the Reserve Feats... mm mm.Yes, because Core is perfectly balanced. It's the Psions and ToB that are overpowered, how can the Wizard hope to compete?

Reserve feats are fun and flavorful. There are about 3 I would take(Dimension Jaunt[which is weaker than Abrupt Jaunt from PHBII], Minor Shapeshift[I will admit is OP], and Summon Elemental Reserve[fun, flavorful, and good for when the Rogue is petrified, but can't replace him and is useless in combat]). There are others which have limited use, but out of 32, one overpowered one is pretty good.

I won't, however, defend CChamp or anything in it.

DM Raven
2008-12-15, 05:54 AM
Yes. No way I'd play with a DM that did that to someone. Ever.

Oh yes, how dare I ask my players to own a rulebook for the game they intend to play. Blasphemy...

DM Raven
2008-12-15, 05:57 AM
So if you friend doesn't have $30, his parents are in debt and earning just enough to put some food on the table and pay the credit bill you kick him out? Even if it's not that extreme not everyone has that $30 to spend. Especially when we are talking about something that is used by a group. If you have a video game, say Halo 3, does that mean your friend should buy Halo 3 as well for him to come over and play it with you? Even if you want him to practice more can't you just lend him the game for a week or two? How about this, buy books as a group. I've done it before, everyone chips in an equal amount and you get a single copy for the group that you pass between yourselves.

I honestly don't know anyone that poor...A $30 lifetime investment is like 2 movies, or eating out three times. I don't think people realize how little $30 is.

And I don't make people own the book when they first get to my games, but if they are still playing three months in they need to have their own book.

shadow_archmagi
2008-12-15, 05:59 AM
Isn't the trick that both of those things are done strictly as hobbies, and not as one's job?

Here's a man's full time job that benefits us all and is completely free.

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Main_Page

RPGuru1331
2008-12-15, 06:00 AM
I'm going to have to side with DM Raven on this one. I wouldn't FORCE anyone to buy a book unless sharing go t onerous, bu t I can see why a GM would, a nd don't particularly m ind, since 30 bucks every few month sis stil l a damn ch eap hobby. An d that assum es you switch to a new system for a longish term campaign every few months.


I'm not "hiding" behind anything. Please provide a quote from myself to back up what you are claiming I said. It's not hard, there's only six pages in the thread. :smallwink:

Really. You n eed me to quote you to you. Well, that's never a good sign, let's see if you editted the post. Oh ho, l ooks like you didn't.


Well, in my ideal world, WotC would go belly-up, Hasbro would decide to sell off the D&D brand name to recuperate some losses, and someone who actually gives a damn about the game and the fanbase could take over.

Never gonna happen, but a guy can dream. :smallbiggrin:

Good lord, dude. Do you not remember what you yourself said?

And don't try that "I didn't specifical ly say X" crap. This ain't a court of law. Implication weighs just as heavily as precise wording.


Here's a man's full time job that benefits us all and is completely free.

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Main_Page

I don't care, dude. You can't do this stuff for free, full time, and raise a family. Jesus Tapdancing Christ, tell me what is wro ng with peop le wanting to be paid for honest work?

Erom
2008-12-15, 11:25 AM
I don't care, dude.

This is unfair to the other people trying to have a discussion with you. You can't just dismiss his point out of hand like that and expect him to take you seriously.


You can't do this stuff for free, full time, and raise a family. Jesus Tapdancing Christ, tell me what is wro ng with peop le wanting to be paid for honest work?

Nothing, and I'm sorry if I came off that way. Good game design absolutely has a value- it's something I am willing to pay money for, in video game or pnp or boardgame format. My point was simply that it is possible to make a free RPG with full permission of the people involved in the creation, not that it is the best, most common, or most likely way for an RPG to be made.

And just like with software, the companies doing this for-profit are eventually going to have to deal with the fact that there are people out there doing it for free. Right now, everyone likes to have a book, but what about the next generation, when everyone is even more used to working with a computer? Given that high-quality systems both free and paid exist, you have to wonder how much longer the paid systems will be able to compete.

PS- If you are into video games, give Dwarf Fortress a try (shadow's link)- it's fantastic. One of the best indy games in existence right now.

RPGuru1331
2008-12-15, 11:42 AM
This is unfair to the other people trying to have a discussion with you. You can't just dismiss his point out of hand like that and expect him to take you seriously.
I can absolutely dismiss singular anomalies that are dedicated to their craft to the point where they put in a full 40 hour/week or more time into it, as well as into some other job that act ually pay the bills, particularly when the norm is the latter. It probably does come off as disrespectful, but using singular anomalies of people who almost certainly aren't raising a family (Where woudl they find the time to keep up with them?) as an example of what could theoretically be done with sufficient dedication, then saying "T hat's how it should be done" strikes me as disrespectful ot the folks who are raising a family with the proceeds of their job, when their job happens to intersect with a hobby.




And just like with software, the companies doing this for-profit are eventually going to have to deal with the fact that there are people out there doing it for free. Right now, everyone likes to have a book, but what about the next generation, when everyone is even more used to working with a computer? Given that high-quality systems both free and paid exist, you have to wonder how much longer the paid systems will be able to compete.
Well, I never said it wasn't possible to make them independently, as tha twould be provably false. But, I don't think the game developers have anything to worry about from indies. AT least, not with software. I've seen too many good to fantastic games and/or th eir creators die hideously in sales compared to the game creators to undervalue marketing and graphics as sales aids.



PS- If you are into video games, give Dwarf Fortress a try (shadow's link)- it's fantastic. One of the best indy games in existence right now.

I have, and do. Ask me my theory for why we don't have dwarves in the real world :smallbiggrin:

Person_Man
2008-12-15, 11:49 AM
In WotC defense, the recession has been lousy to everyone. Topps shut down WizKids (Heroclix, Mechwarrior, Mageknight) last month, even though WizKids was ridiculously beloved by their fans (they gave away stuff all the time, had contests, "promoted" judges, etc), and their games were fun, easy, addictive, and collectible. You could easily spend more on Clix for one weekend then you might spend on D&D books during your entire life, and the company still went under.

WotC still botched their marketing of 4E, which made a bad situation worse. But their are obviously structural economic factors in play here as well.

Erom
2008-12-15, 11:49 AM
I can absolutely dismiss singular anomalies
Fair enough, Mr. Adams is something of an outlier, I agree, and thus not really relevant to the discussion. I misinterpreted your tone- it sounded like you hadn't considered his argument, not that you had considered it and rejected it.

horseboy
2008-12-15, 01:01 PM
I said that I like some splat, but you can't deny that people who don't give a crap about powergaming are more likely going to just make up their own rules than go out and buy a brand new book on the subject.I fail to see how a "roleplayer" is any more or less intrinsically likely to homebrew than a "powergamer".

Thurbane
2008-12-15, 08:34 PM
***stuff***
Just to help ease your apparent confusion, here's my initial reply (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5446888#post5446888) to your post (that you didn't seem to want to reply to at the time, until I requoted part of your initial post in response to BillyJimBoBob (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5455413#post5455413)).

When you want to debate like a grownup who backs up their statements, instead of exhanging snark like petulant children, let me know. :smallwink:

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-16, 11:16 AM
Funny I thought the whole point of splatbooks was to get the character you wanted without having to make up your own rules...

BillyJimBoBob
2008-12-16, 02:07 PM
I'd never spend hundreds of dollars on any hobby, let alone thousands. I have to say, I'd have been one of the players that left. Some people just can't afford to buy the gaming books - they're sodding expensive. This side of the pond, I think £25 is about average, and there's no way I'm paying that much for it. I'm a student, I have limited amounts of money.

Protip: If non-problem players leave your game because of a ruling you make, you're doing it wrong.
That's fair enough, until you assume that it's appropriate for you to not pay while others pay for your access to the rules. You might want to consider another hobby. Frisbee, for example, only costs what you spend on frisbees and gasoline to and from the disk courses. I've still managed to spend well over $100(US) on frisbees, but it can be done for much less.

Protip: If the GM needs more than a single player to be looking something up, and there's only one book because only one person is really paying for the entertainment, you're doing it wrong. In my play group the players are often tapped to look up rules while the GM continues keeping the action going, so you in our group would not be a non-problem player, you'd be a problem player. If you were asked to pick up a copy of the PHB and left the group because of that request, you would have become a non-problem player and everyone would be happy, except maybe you.


Yes. No way I'd play with a DM that did that [ask them to buy the books needed to play the game] to someone. Ever.I know, that's such an imposition, isn't it? I mean, just because the GM paid for the whole set of books, and all the other players picked up the Players Handbook, what kind of fascist thinks it's at all fair that you pick up your part of the cost?

The above is sarcasm, and I don't mean it as harshly as I think it might read. I hope the point is clear though: Group play? Group participation in every aspect of the game, and that includes buying in so that you can read your own copy of the rules.


I dunno, a lot of people out there are really willing to pour they're heart and soul into something and then give it away for free. See open source software development. And sure, that's not a full time job for too many people out there, but many hands, light work and all that. You really think given the size of the RPG community you couldn't crowdsource a game and get it developed for free? I think all you would have to do is sift through the various homebrew section on forums like this and package up the best (balance and innovation considered) and you would be done pretty quickly.There's usually a few exceptions to every rule. So you can probably find someone willing to give away their work for nothing. But that doesn't invalidate the rule: People typically want compensation for long hours of effort.

As for crowdsourcing an RPG, good luck with that. I predict dozens of factions splintering off to form their own 'pure' version after any number of religious wars on any number of decisions both minor and major.


Mmm, the perfect example is Complete Champion, which has some of the cheesiest stuff known to man. It's a pretty common theme for 3.5 that the later the books came out the cheesier the stuff became. Lion Totem Barb, Devotions, the whole shebang. Complete mage with the Reserve Feats... mm mm.

I said that I like some splat, but you can't deny that people who don't give a crap about powergaming are more likely going to just make up their own rules than go out and buy a brand new book on the subject.

I agree that Complete Champion has a lot of cheese in it. But it still didn't manage to balance martial characters against magic. There was plenty of cheese inherent in core 3.x which 4e managed to sweep away (I'll not make any value judgement here, not looking to argue 3.x vs. 4e, just saying that my experience is that 4e is a better balanced system, like it or hate it on other grounds as you wish).

A lot of your splat book cheese would have been just fine save for the multi-classing rules. Take 1 level of Lion Totem Barbarian (or was it spirit totem, or some other such nonesense?) solely for the purpose of gaining full attack on a charge and you've effectively added a force multiplier to your character in comparison to a single classed Lion Totem Barbarian. Again, an issue which 4e did away with, reinforcing the better balance of that system's characters.

If 4e isn't selling well and WotC decided to hold some layoffs, it's my opinion that there are two factors largely at work here: The economy; and the staff glut they would have had after the release of 4e. It's common for companies to ramp up personnel before and during a major project, and ramp down during periods where there are fewer irons in the fire.

It's always tough to be laid off, I know from personal experience. But it's also possible that the company doing the layoffs did their best to take care of the people heading out the door. You'll always hear the stories from the people who are the most disgruntled, since bad news spreads fastest and farthest.

When I was laid off by Lucent during the dot com bust their were several loud voices who complained that we were unfairly treated. I never felt that way. My team faced Worldcom, which declared their insolvency immediately before our team was shut down. There would have been zero business sense in keeping a dedicated sales force in place facing a company going through chapter 11. And Lucent vested everyone's pension plan, which was not an employee contributed plan and which they had no legal obligation to vest. I have nothing bad to say about Lucent, then or now.

Similarly with WotC, we've heard a few voices only. Some neutral, some dissatisfied. Does that make WotC executives bad people? I say no. We have no real idea how or why those names were selected, and no real idea how people were treated on their way out the door.

So I say, continue to enjoy the game. Just because a respected author or other well known personalities have left the company doesn't mean that the next book out will be crap by default.

clericwithnogod
2008-12-17, 10:31 AM
I know, that's such an imposition, isn't it? I mean, just because the GM paid for the whole set of books, and all the other players picked up the Players Handbook, what kind of fascist thinks it's at all fair that you pick up your part of the cost?

The above is sarcasm, and I don't mean it as harshly as I think it might read. I hope the point is clear though: Group play? Group participation in every aspect of the game, and that includes buying in so that you can read your own copy of the rules.


If you really thought it read more harshly than you meant, you should have re-written it.

Fortunately the harshness is overshadowed by the absurdity. It is hard to tell which paragraph is sarcasm. You're actually arguing that six people sitting at the same table should each buy one of the same book or be kicked out of the game rather than share books that one or some of them has that another doesn't and that this is "group play" somehow? I see the point you're expressing, but it doesn't qualify as 'the point' of a social activity. It isn't the epitomy of "group play" in any fashion. To put it in the least harsh way possible, your point is ridiculous, and repulsive.

Did you never buy a book, like it, and share it with a friend? Or would you say, "I really like this book. You should go buy a copy because you can't read mine."

Do you have your friends over to watch a fight on pay-per-view, but make them pay the full price for the fight to the cable company? "Let's watch the fight at my place tonight. Everybody bring a copy of your cable bill or you're not welcome."

Before this thread, I couldn't imagine a child saying, "Let's play Chutes and Ladders, but you can only play if you own Chutes and Ladders too." But I can now. Some of those children never learn any better and grow up to say, "You can't play DND with me unless you have a Player's Handbook."

And, as noted, I wouldn't play with someone that would do something like that to someone else. I wouldn't play in a game they were DMing whether I had the book myself or not and I wouldn't have them in a game I was DMing after they'd done something like that.

PurinaDragonCho
2008-12-17, 11:14 AM
WotC still botched their marketing of 4E, which made a bad situation worse.

In retrospect, I don't think it *was* botched. I think the intention was to drive away many of the long-time players. And I think they accomplished that. It could be that they wanted to target a new generation of first time players without a bunch of old dudes like me around complaining about how things used to be.

I used to be on the Wizards forums several times a day. I don't have any idea when the past time I went there was. Just a hunch, but I doubt I'm alone in that. Not that things aren't busy over there. They have their new fan base.

Hzurr
2008-12-17, 11:51 AM
In retrospect, I don't think it *was* botched. I think the intention was to drive away many of the long-time players. And I think they accomplished that. It could be that they wanted to target a new generation of first time players without a bunch of old dudes like me around complaining about how things used to be.


Er...no. Wizards wants new fans, yes, but basic business 101 states that it's always more profitable to keep an existing customer than to try and attract new customers. WotC never sat around and said "bwahahaha...let's destroy our old fanbase, because they are over 20! Bwahahahaha!!!"

I honestly don't understand why people say WotC botched the marketing. I mean, from the moment they announced it, people on these boardss (and others, I assume) were going crazy to find out more details, to figure out which races and classes were going to be available, etc. I mean, I remember reading articles about the new edition on BBC news and CNN; they had the big Penny Arcade & PVP podcast of people playing the game; People were really excited about it.

How is this botched marketing? People purchased their product, and those who didn't decided not to because they decided they prefered the old system, not because of marketing decisions.

Don't confuse "poor marketing" with "poor game design" or anything like that. Just because some people decided that they didn't like 4E and prefered the older version, I don't think that reflects the marketing that WotC did, because it still had people looking into 4E.

PurinaDragonCho
2008-12-17, 12:13 PM
Er...no. Wizards wants new fans, yes, but basic business 101 states that it's always more profitable to keep an existing customer than to try and attract new customers. WotC never sat around and said "bwahahaha...let's destroy our old fanbase, because they are over 20! Bwahahahaha!!!"

I take it you haven't seen the discussions about "firing the old fan base." Believe me, I completely understand that it would be good business to keep old customers and add new customers, but I honestly don't think that was the plan. Not because I think they're EVIL - I think it was a business decision. One that I don't agree with, but a reasonable decision based on the numbers.


I honestly don't understand why people say WotC botched the marketing.

I personally felt that their marketing showed a complete contempt for the customers. From trashing their existing product to the whole "we've got something new, we're not going to tell you what it is, but trust us, it's awesome!" The way the product was announced and marketed unnecessarily angered a large section of the fan base. It was too blatant to be unintentional. I happen to think the marketing people are smart enought o know better, unless their intention was to get the kind of reaction they got. Yes, lots of people were excited. But lots of people who otherwise could have been won over were driven away by the unnecessarily divisive marketing - and let me restate here that this is JUST MY OPINION, based solely on MY PERCEPTION of this. I'm not trying to say this is UNQUESTIONABLE FACT or anything of the sort. Nor do I mean to yell about this, I just want to make certain those all capped words are stressed.


Don't confuse "poor marketing" with "poor game design" or anything like that. Just because some people decided that they didn't like 4E and prefered the older version, I don't think that reflects the marketing that WotC did, because it still had people looking into 4E.

I don't have any opinion on the game design. I haven't played 4e, and have no desire to. It may be the best designed game ever, for all I know. That really has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-17, 12:33 PM
I just think there were mistakes made (like saying the complainers are trolls), I doubt they planned to get fired.

DM Raven
2008-12-17, 03:45 PM
I'm pretty sure that WOTC's intention is to make games that people can enjoy. They are not trying to drive away their fanbase, they're trying to increase it and turn a profit so they can keep making D&D.

D&D and PnP RPGs in general are great games. The problem is that they don't make money...there is a reason all these great game systems vanish from the stores, it's because the game itself can be played with a very small investment up-front and almost no investment over time. Anyone can pay $30 and pick up a Player's Handbook and they are basically set for life.

I honestly think that WOTC needs to promote D&D more. They need to promote it and encourage people to become DMs so that more players are attracted to and can play the game.

BillyJimBoBob
2008-12-17, 04:17 PM
If you really thought it read more harshly than you meant, you should have re-written it.Naw, because what I wrote made the point best. And text is an imperfect medium for conveying sarcasm, so I explained that it was sarcasm.


Fortunately the harshness is overshadowed by the absurdity. It is hard to tell which paragraph is sarcasm. You're actually arguing that six people sitting at the same table should each buy one of the same book or be kicked out of the game rather than share books that one or some of them has that another doesn't and that this is "group play" somehow? I see the point you're expressing, but it doesn't qualify as 'the point' of a social activity. It isn't the epitomy of "group play" in any fashion. To put it in the least harsh way possible, your point is ridiculous, and repulsive.M,glad you think so! But of course I disagree.
I'll explain a bit further, but it'll probably come down to you and I having differing views which can never be reconciled.
All players should own their own copies of the rules they they need to know to play the game. Yes, I said it: All. Why do you find this assertion to have anything to do with group play? But you put it in quotes so perhaps you meant something else. Maybe you meant "Most of the group subsidizes your play"? Or perhaps "We all bought these books, but you can slide play"? Or even "I'm a special Princess, you all can pay my way play"?

A player without the rules is typically a crappy player. A starting player can fumble along, but eventually they need to buy the rules to get better. This was the method described in the post you found so offensive that you said you'd leave the group rather than contribute towards making the game better. Not your words, but the impact of your words.

How often have you picked up one of your gaming books at home between sessions just to re-familiarize yourself with one or more rules? Did you ever get grappled in one game session and think to yourself "Hey, maybe that would be a decent thing for my Fighter to do next session"? But, damn. You never bought the books. So you can't learn new rules, and you can't explore new possibilities for your character. You can't get better and contribute to the fun of the other players.

Instead, you (not you you, the exampled you) come to the game session having leveled your Wizard and borrow the PHB of another player. And when the GM starts the session, you're still not ready because there sure are a lot of spells and you aren't familiar with any of them because you refuse to buy the damn book needed to play the game. Hell, you're not even sure where in the rulebook to look for the spells, so you ask another player ot point them out to you. You're a disruption, a distraction, a drag on the time and fun of everyone else in the room. You should feel ashamed of yourself.


Did you never buy a book, like it, and share it with a friend? Or would you say, "I really like this book. You should go buy a copy because you can't read mine."I'm not totally clear on the law on this, but I think that is perfectly legal, and thus a straw man argument.


Do you have your friends over to watch a fight on pay-per-view, but make them pay the full price for the fight to the cable company? "Let's watch the fight at my place tonight. Everybody bring a copy of your cable bill or you're not welcome."Irrelevant, straw man. The pay-per-view license (in brief) gives me the right to show it to anyone I care to, as long as I don't charge them a fee.


Before this thread, I couldn't imagine a child saying, "Let's play Chutes and Ladders, but you can only play if you own Chutes and Ladders too."Another straw man.


Some of those children grow up to say, "You can't play DND with me unless you have a Player's Handbook."And I applaud those children. They make the world a better role playing place.
Note: I edited out "never learn any better and" from your sentence to make it make some sense.


And, as noted, I wouldn't play with someone that would do something like that to someone else. I wouldn't play in a game they were DMing whether I had the book myself or not and I wouldn't have them in a game I was DMing after they'd done something like that.Looks like we'll get along fine after all, because we are in complete agreement. We wouldn't have your freeloading ass in our groups, and you'd refuse to play in our games where the players actually know the rules, can assist the GM in looking up the rules, and can take some time away from the gaming table to improve their knowledge of the rules. We only like good players, and we define good players as cooperative and knowledgeable about the rules. Your attitude describes you as neither of those things, and so you'd be a very welcome absence at our gaming tables.

DM Raven
2008-12-17, 05:12 PM
People should own their own books...it's a fair request to make of someone. If you're playing the game you should have a rulebook. During games, you should not be borrowing other people's books to look something up. Especially if they are trying to use their books to do the same. And once the game ends and you want to, say, level up a character and buy new equipment. Are you going to wait until the next game and force the other players to wait for you while you work on something you should have completed on your own time?

As a player, you are not asked to do much at a game. You should be interacting with your friends and having fun. You don't have to do the massive amounts of work the DM does, you just have to sit there and be entertained. Are you really that cheap that you can't make the $30 dollar investment to have your own PHB.

Of course, it's your DM's call on how he wants things to be run. But your DM has spoiled you if you are turning your nose up at others and saying its "rediculous" that people have to actually buy their own stuff and not just mooch off of others. I used to not care about people sharing books...but honestly, I'm tired of seeing the same players make the investment each time and the same moochers just continue to slow down games by not having their own stuff. I've found that players willing to make an investment in the game are usually the better players anyway...

BillyJimBoBob
2008-12-17, 06:50 PM
I take it you haven't seen the discussions about "firing the old fan base." Believe me, I completely understand that it would be good business to keep old customers and add new customers, but I honestly don't think that was the plan. Not because I think they're EVIL - I think it was a business decision. One that I don't agree with, but a reasonable decision based on the numbers.I haven't. Can you point me at them, please?


I personally felt that their marketing showed a complete contempt for the customers. From trashing their existing product to the whole "we've got something new, we're not going to tell you what it is, but trust us, it's awesome!" The way the product was announced and marketed unnecessarily angered a large section of the fan base. It was too blatant to be unintentional. I happen to think the marketing people are smart enought o know better, unless their intention was to get the kind of reaction they got. Yes, lots of people were excited. But lots of people who otherwise could have been won over were driven away by the unnecessarily divisive marketing - and let me restate here that this is JUST MY OPINION, based solely on MY PERCEPTION of this. I'm not trying to say this is UNQUESTIONABLE FACT or anything of the sort. Nor do I mean to yell about this, I just want to make certain those all capped words are stressed.But, wouldn't the same kinds of marketing you describe which would anger the existing fan base also be the same kind of marketing which would fail to attract a new fan base?

I don't know about you and your gaming pals, but I don't know a single person who claims to have picked up a version of D&D (whichever version was around at the time) just because they saw it in a game store. All of them were drawn into the game by other gamers and their excitement about the game. I would think that deliberately driving away your best source of new players would be a very, very foolish thing to do.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-17, 07:23 PM
I honestly don't understand why people say WotC botched the marketing.

Because, as said by Person Man earlier in this very thread, and I quote,

WotC had a big build up to 4E, with a big "count down" screen roadblocking their website. Upon reaching zero, the website promptly crashed (http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/08/16/2334255.shtml). This was a recurrent problem (http://rpgcentric.com/tiny-adventures-wizards-continues-to-lag-behind-in-the-electronic-age.html) with all of their online endeavors. A few months after it was launched, Gleemax was shut down after being widely panned (http://www.criticalgamers.com/archives/board-games/gleemax_to_close_shop_yikes.php). But don't worry, closing down Gleemax was a good thing, because it would free up staff to work on D&D Insider. For some reason, this integral part of the new 4E gaming experience wasn't ready (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/06/1522250) when they announced it, and still isn't ready now (www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insider). And when they do release new 4E content, it requires registration (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/2116237) to see the preview, which means that most new customers can't read it and won't bother to jump through hoops just to look at it. And D&D Online in general is widely disliked (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/13/) as a poorly done WoW clone, viewed by most as a cynical attempt to get subscription fees. In what was perhaps their biggest blunder, WotC killed the OGL, and none of the previous big 3rd party publishers signed on (http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/07/31/3rd-party-dd-gslogl-publishers/). WotC pissed off and directly threatened the jobs and livelihood of thousands of their most hard core supporters. And a huge portion of the D&D fan base has dreams of getting their ideas published one day, who now know that the probability of that happening with 4E is close to 0. And every supplement they sold or popular homebrew that someone posts essentially required the buyer to own (or borrow) a copy of 3.0 or 3.5 D&D, support that is not occurring for 4E.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-17, 07:28 PM
I think the point is this: as anybody who reads Dilbert or User Friendly can attest (not to mention anyone who's encountered in real life), marketing people very different from designers.

Designers don't do marketing. Marketers don't do design, and more importantly do not have to understand it.

And in the case of WOTC, I do rather believe that the designers are from the original WOTC team that made Magic and 3E and all those other famous games, whereas the marketing team is heavily influenced by Hasbro. I can thus easily imagine that they would design something well, and botch its marketing through not understanding their product.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-17, 07:32 PM
People should own their own books...it's a fair request to make of someone.
Your condescending remarks aside, this really only applies if you play (almost) only one roleplaying game, without exception.

My group plays or has played D&D, Vampire, Werewolf, Paranoia, GURPS, Cyberpunk, and half a dozen other things I could mention. Everybody owns some amount of rulebooks, nobody owns them all. But nobody minds if people lack the rulebooks for the particular game we're playing at the moment.

Of course, it never takes extra time to level characters during sessions, because people do that in between sessions. And of course the speed of looking things up is not improved by adding additional books.

Tacoma
2008-12-17, 07:34 PM
Also if I buy a book for a game I think is cool, and I want to get the rest of the gang to see if they like it, we can pick up a second copy at a used bookstore and just share. If people want to make it a regular thing, they might buy books. But you can't expect people to buy books all the time.

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-17, 11:30 PM
I was going to say they need to make more videogames, but I actually don't want to play a 4e videogame.

Thurbane
2008-12-18, 12:35 AM
I was going to say they need to make more videogames, but I actually don't want to play a 4e videogame.
The pinnacle of D&D games for me was ToEE by Atari/Troika. It had a lot of bugs, but I absolutely loved the interface, and it captured the spirit of turn based combat better than any other D&D video game I've played.

Not to mention that ToEE has a sentimental place as my favorite module...we played that sucker a LOT of times back in our 1E and 2E days...

Thurbane
2008-12-18, 12:43 AM
People should own their own books...it's a fair request to make of someone.
I agree with the sentiment completely, although I wouldn't go as far as banning someone who didn't comply (especially being chronically short on players as is. Not to mention I primarily game for social reasons - to catch up with guys once a week that I might not otherwise see. The game itself, while I dearly love it, is secondary).

It can be very annoying if there is someone at the table who constantly mooches off others, and sometimes it doesn't stop at books. I've played with guys who wouldn't even buy their own dice. Everyone knows what a major faux pas it is to touch another player's dice, and drain the luck out of them. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, if we want our hobby to flourish, it's not too much to ask players to at least buy their own copies of the PHB. It also saves people grappling for books during combat, so multiple players can look things up at once.

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-18, 01:22 AM
The pinnacle of D&D games for me was ToEE by Atari/Troika. It had a lot of bugs, but I absolutely loved the interface, and it captured the spirit of turn based combat better than any other D&D video game I've played.

Not to mention that ToEE has a sentimental place as my favorite module...we played that sucker a LOT of times back in our 1E and 2E days...

I liked kotor's system.

Thurbane
2008-12-18, 01:28 AM
I liked kotor's system.
Yeah, haven't tried that yet. I only recently found out it was based on the d20 system! D'oh! *headslap* :smalltongue:

DM Raven
2008-12-18, 03:16 AM
I agree with the sentiment completely, although I wouldn't go as far as banning someone who didn't comply (especially being chronically short on players as is. Not to mention I primarily game for social reasons - to catch up with guys once a week that I might not otherwise see. The game itself, while I dearly love it, is secondary).

It can be very annoying if there is someone at the table who constantly mooches off others, and sometimes it doesn't stop at books. I've played with guys who wouldn't even buy their own dice. Everyone knows what a major faux pas it is to touch another player's dice, and drain the luck out of them. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, if we want our hobby to flourish, it's not too much to ask players to at least buy their own copies of the PHB. It also saves people grappling for books during combat, so multiple players can look things up at once.

Oh man, don't even get me started on players who don't buy their own dice...

See, I have the opposite problem. I have three full games of players and a bunch of people waiting in line to get in on my games. I finally had to take a break from DMing because I was getting burned out. Like I said, people just get spoiled because their DMs let them get away with being cheap. I did too for a long time, then I finally just put my foot down and told people to stop being cheap and buy a book. I own all the books for all the systems I play because I have to know the rules and be able to look things up so I can plan for games...all they need to do is buy one book, some dice, and show up.

Again, not saying you have to agree with me. If you run a game you should do it however you want...but I still feel people who complain about buying books are being super cheap.

Kurald Galain
2008-12-18, 05:31 AM
It can be very annoying if there is someone at the table who constantly mooches off others, and sometimes it doesn't stop at books. I've played with guys who wouldn't even buy their own dice.
The solution I've found for people who won't buy their own dice, is wait until their next birthday or christmas or whatever, and give them dice as a present. But we tend to play non-dice-heavy games anyway, so it's less of a problem.

Still, nobody likes a moocher. We have the agreement that people bring munchies or drinks to a game, and I've had one player who persistently refused to ever bring anything. When I told him it bothered me that he never did, he quit the campaign in a huff.

Knaight
2008-12-18, 08:39 AM
Honestly, it doesn't bother me much, unless people abuse my dice, in which case die privileges go away. I usually play fudge, and have the book, but it doesn't take long to learn and you don't need it on hand. What bothers me is when people refuse to read the free PDF, which has the basic rules. As I have enough fudge dice(plus minus blank dice) for 5 people, and normal six siders which also work, and everybody needs a whole 3-4 dice, I just provide the dice. The only thing that really bothers me is that my brother, who plays, and lives in the same house, still hasn't read the fudge book because "its too boringly written". :smallfurious:

BillyJimBoBob
2008-12-18, 04:05 PM
Because, as said by Person Man earlier in this very thread, and I quote,

WotC had a big build up to 4E, with a big "count down" screen roadblocking their website. Upon reaching zero, the website promptly crashed (http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/08/16/2334255.shtml). This was a recurrent problem (http://rpgcentric.com/tiny-adventures-wizards-continues-to-lag-behind-in-the-electronic-age.html) with all of their online endeavors. A few months after it was launched, Gleemax was shut down after being widely panned (http://www.criticalgamers.com/archives/board-games/gleemax_to_close_shop_yikes.php). But don't worry, closing down Gleemax was a good thing, because it would free up staff to work on D&D Insider. For some reason, this integral part of the new 4E gaming experience wasn't ready (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/06/1522250) when they announced it, and still isn't ready now (www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insider). And when they do release new 4E content, it requires registration (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/2116237) to see the preview, which means that most new customers can't read it and won't bother to jump through hoops just to look at it. And D&D Online in general is widely disliked (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/13/) as a poorly done WoW clone, viewed by most as a cynical attempt to get subscription fees. In what was perhaps their biggest blunder, WotC killed the OGL, and none of the previous big 3rd party publishers signed on (http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/07/31/3rd-party-dd-gslogl-publishers/). WotC pissed off and directly threatened the jobs and livelihood of thousands of their most hard core supporters. And a huge portion of the D&D fan base has dreams of getting their ideas published one day, who now know that the probability of that happening with 4E is close to 0. And every supplement they sold or popular homebrew that someone posts essentially required the buyer to own (or borrow) a copy of 3.0 or 3.5 D&D, support that is not occurring for 4E.

Ok, but what is the impact of any or all of that on a potential buyer?

Let me share with you the impact of it on me, and on every person I play D&D with:

- WotC had a big build up to 4E, with a big "count down" screen roadblocking their website. Upon reaching zero, the website promptly crashed (http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/08/16/2334255.shtml).

I wasn't at all aware of the count down timer. I didn't hear about the crash until this thread (or whatever thread your list was posted in, I recall reading this litany of sins previously but not where). Net result: Don't care, might chuckle at the ineptitude of failing to anticipate server load at the moment of the "big reveal", but otherwise simply do not care at all.

- This was a recurrent problem (http://rpgcentric.com/tiny-adventures-wizards-continues-to-lag-behind-in-the-electronic-age.html) with all of their online endeavors.

Again, heard about Tiny Adventures when I read the original list of e-errors. Went to facebook (or wherever, don't recall) and saw that it required an account. Didn't register, won't register to see this content.

- A few months after it was launched, Gleemax was shut down after being widely panned (http://www.criticalgamers.com/archives/board-games/gleemax_to_close_shop_yikes.php).

I have (had?) an account on Gleemax. I posted on a few interesting 4e threads, and read a great many more. I was not regular enough after 4e was published that I even noticed the absence. I did find the Gleemax interface to be cludgy and awkward, but guess what? I didn't even know that Gleemax was a WotC site. I thought it was a simple fan site, similar to this one. So the existence of Gleemax and it's ultimate closure on my purchase decision for 4e? Zero.

- But don't worry, closing down Gleemax was a good thing, because it would free up staff to work on D&D Insider. For some reason, this integral part of the new 4E gaming experience wasn't ready (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/06/1522250) when they announced it, and still isn't ready now (www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insider).

Yet another resource I learned about on this forum, if well before the e-errors list was posted. When I went to look it required a fee, and to get what I thought was a decent monthly fee for what seemed to amount to access to beta material (class sneak previews, etc), rumors, some articles from Dragon maybe and other editorial material required a 6 month plus commitment. Not wanting access to this marginally useful material (in my opinion) with that kind of time and money commitment, I didn't sign up. But I also didn't care much.

- And when they do release new 4E content, it requires registration (http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/2116237) to see the preview, which means that most new customers can't read it and won't bother to jump through hoops just to look at it.


New content, or new beta content? I might be blissfully ignorant of the fact that new content is published. I chose not to register to see what I considered to be beta content, since there's little use in beta material. I've enjoyed reading the Barbarian sneak preview, but I seem to have missed out on the short windows for the Bard and Druid. No great loss, although I am glad that these three classes will be in the 4e PHBII.

- And D&D Online in general is widely disliked (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/13/) as a poorly done WoW clone, viewed by most as a cynical attempt to get subscription fees.

Another complete miss to my "care" target. I play WoW, and I've got a pile of friends who do also. It's quite frankly more of a time soak than I'm willing to invest in to play at the top level of content already. So my desire to buy or play other MMOs is slim to none, and slim left the building. I haven't even read anything about D&DO, and don't care if others like it or not. The existence and relative value of D&DO as an MMO doesn't impact my PNP play at all.

- In what was perhaps their biggest blunder, WotC killed the OGL, and none of the previous big 3rd party publishers signed on (http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/07/31/3rd-party-dd-gslogl-publishers/). WotC pissed off and directly threatened the jobs and livelihood of thousands of their most hard core supporters. And a huge portion of the D&D fan base has dreams of getting their ideas published one day, who now know that the probability of that happening with 4E is close to 0. And every supplement they sold or popular homebrew that someone posts essentially required the buyer to own (or borrow) a copy of 3.0 or 3.5 D&D, support that is not occurring for 4E.

Biggest blunder? Um, yeah. I'm going to have to say that I disagree with the entire premise of this point, even if I grace it with the label "point" rather than "rant". I play D&D, and have since the 3 booklet set, 30+ years of play with some years of breaks here and there. I've been a member of gaming clubs both large and small. Some with a few dozen members, some with literally hundreds of members. And I've been in several friendly gatherings of semi-regular players which don't qualify as formal clubs in which I've met many more D&D players. I've never met a single player over all those years and exposure to other D&D players who had "dreams of getting their [D&D] ideas published one day", and so to call this nigh non-existent or at best vanishingly tiny portion of the player base "a huge portion of the D&D fan base" is just hyperbole, from my well traveled point of view at least. Similarly, I don't know a single person whose job is threatened by the changing of the licensing scheme from 3.x to 4e. Really, who comes up with the copy here? My "I care" value is so low here as to be non-existent, because these so called problems or issues or gaffs of WotC are invisible to me and do not impact either myself or anyone I know, at all.

I play D&D. I don't live D&D. The financial decisions of the company that publishes D&D are largely irrelevant to me. And because I'm a fan but not a fan-boy (defined in this context as someone who is deeply immersed in the game and related game culture, wants to see all content even before it it published in hard format, lives on the manufacturers forums looking for new material, plays the online version and the tiny version, etc, etc) most of this litany of sins was completely under my radar. If I didn't read OotS and skim these forums occasionally I would never have either heard of or cared about anything on that list. And I still don't care, even if I'm now aware of the list.

And the same is true for every other person I know personally who plays the game. Most or all of that list are events that only mattered to a very few (relatively speaking) players of D&D, and thus all the ranting and claims that WotC botched the marketing is really just much ado about nothing.

If some folks are so wrapped up in the gaming culture that they feel that they need to take emotional stock in who comes and goes at WotC, or become incensed about the dropping of a web forum, or whatever else, I suggest that they take a deep breath and repeat the MST3K mantra (paraphrased): Relax, it's just a game.

Yeah, it's fun to debate or even argue about this bit of trivia or that. But it's not like it really matters in the long run. It doesn't even matter until your next play session of D&D.

potatocubed
2008-12-18, 04:33 PM
And the same is true for every other person I know personally who plays the game. Most or all of that list are events that only mattered to a very few (relatively speaking) players of D&D, and thus all the ranting and claims that WotC botched the marketing is really just much ado about nothing.

If only a tiny fraction of your potential market knows or cares about your products, that's botched marketing.

If the products then fail to work as intended or on time, that's botched design.

The fact that most people don't give a spoon doesn't make Wizards' handling of the 4e launch any better. I made an appalling batch of egg fried rice last month; nobody cared, least of all me, but the rice was still screwed up.

Person_Man
2008-12-18, 05:12 PM
I've never met a single player over all those years and exposure to other D&D players who had "dreams of getting their [D&D] ideas published one day", and so to call this nigh non-existent or at best vanishingly tiny portion of the player base "a huge portion of the D&D fan base" is just hyperbole, from my well traveled point of view at least. Similarly, I don't know a single person whose job is threatened by the changing of the licensing scheme from 3.x to 4e.

Here is a partial list of companies (http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/07/31/3rd-party-dd-gslogl-publishers/) (linked to in my original post) whose jobs were threatened by the change of licensing chance from 3.x to 4E, and/or by 4E's generally poor marketing. (Poor marketing that you were largely unaware of - another clear sign that it had failed). If you would like further proof, I'd suggest that you should go to Gencon (http://www.gencon.com/) or any of the many other gaming conventions, and talk to the people who work the tables. Or perhaps you should spend some time in the Homebrew forum of this site or any of the hundreds of other gaming forums/sites. Walk into a game store, and talk to the people playing in back and working behind the counter. You'll find that they are filled with people who would like to get their ideas published, and/or who's livelihood depend on a healthy gaming industry. Or maybe you should talk to Rich Burlew (the independent publisher who owns this site and graciously allows us to hang out on it), and ask him what he thinks.

I understand fully that you personally may not know anyone who is passionate about D&D, or whose livelihood has been threatened by the current situation. It's a big planet. People have varying degrees of interest in D&D, just as people have varying degrees of interest in politics or football. We all get that. But I hope you can understand that within this big world, there are plenty of people who's favorite hobby and/or paycheck depends on the decisions made by WotC.

horseboy
2008-12-18, 05:42 PM
I don't know about you and your gaming pals, but I don't know a single person who claims to have picked up a version of D&D (whichever version was around at the time) just because they saw it in a game store. All of them were drawn into the game by other gamers and their excitement about the game. I would think that deliberately driving away your best source of new players would be a very, very foolish thing to do.
I was brought in by Mazes and Monsters and the rest of the bad publicity. I had to figure it out myself, cause in those days there weren't groups just everywhere.
What bothers me is when people refuse to read the free PDF, which has the basic rules. Oh man, this annoys me too. I've got one sheet with a list of bonuses, combat summary and what optional rules are in play and I still can't get some players to remember that. :smallannoyed:
But, Yeah. I lost most of my dice in a hurricane and then a move, so I can't ever remember where my new dice are, since they fit in an Altoids tin instead of a one liter Gatorade bottle. It's bad when the GM has to borrow dice, then when your own dice kill you you can't blame me. :smallwink:

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-18, 11:30 PM
I forget how to roll up characters all the time.

BillyJimBoBob
2008-12-22, 12:36 PM
If only a tiny fraction of your potential market knows or cares about your products, that's botched marketing.

If the products then fail to work as intended or on time, that's botched design.

The fact that most people don't give a spoon doesn't make Wizards' handling of the 4e launch any better. I made an appalling batch of egg fried rice last month; nobody cared, least of all me, but the rice was still screwed up.You use the word "products", but was it mostly products, or was it mostly freebies? Did Tiny Adventures require a fee? Was there a fee involved with the 4e countdown timer? Does browsing the WotC web site require a fee (D&DI excluded)? Did Gleemax have a fee associated with it? Registering for D&DI and playing D&DO costs a fee, and yes I learned about them both here rather than direct from WotC. So you've got a point about the marketing, but I'm not sure I'd agree it's completely valid. How was WotC supposed to get this message to me? Since I play but do not live D&D I don't spent a lot of time browsing their web site, which is where I'd expect to see most notices of their additional products and services. What kind of marketing failure is it to not reach a person who is disinterested in these peripheral products and services anyway? Even if they had bought commercial time during last years Superbowl I would not have rushed to my computer to sign up for either of those products. But from what I read here the knowledge of these products and the freebies did reach those people who are interested in them. Sounds like effective target marketing to me.


Here is a partial list of companies (http://www.critical-hits.com/2008/07/31/3rd-party-dd-gslogl-publishers/) (linked to in my original post) whose jobs were threatened by the change of licensing chance from 3.x to 4E [...]I'm afraid I don't understand. These companies do have the option to produce 4e supplements, yes? Or, they can continue to produce 3e supplements, again at their choice? And if they choose not to do one or the other, isn't that their own decision based on their own estimation of the profitability potential? Sounds less like a list of companies "threatened" by 4e and more like a list of companies in a free market with a decision to make about what option has the best profit potential. Let's hope they make the best of this opportunity.


If you would like further proof, I'd suggest that you should go to Gencon (http://www.gencon.com/) or any of the many other gaming conventions, and talk to the people who work the tables. Or perhaps you should spend some time in the Homebrew forum of this site or any of the hundreds of other gaming forums/sites. Walk into a game store, and talk to the people playing in back and working behind the counter. You'll find that they are filled with people who would like to get their ideas published, and/or who's livelihood depend on a healthy gaming industry. Or maybe you should talk to Rich Burlew (the independent publisher who owns this site and graciously allows us to hang out on it), and ask him what he thinks.I've been to Gencon and Origins, but not in many years. I'm not sure I know what you'd expect for me to find there. Currently I attend one or two conventions per year, one focused on tabletop miniature games and the other on the same plus board games. Neither has any RPGs represented. Cold Wars and Fall In are those cons, if anyone is interested.

I don't crawl the Homebrew forums, but I'm baffled at your connection of someone who posts their work freely on an open forum and someone who would like to sell that work. The two things are mutually exclusive, and participating in the former is highly counterproductive to the latter. People may entertain and express their pipe dreams to sell their work, but the very first thing they should do if they are at all serious about making that dream a reality is to stop giving their work away for nothing.

I frequent my local gaming store. I'm happy to say that it has been the most successful of any I've known in my entire gaming experience. Unlike nearly every other such store which has eventually closed or moved to a smaller front and reduced their inventories, this one has twice expanded their original front, and now has a second location as well. They have a very active gaming involvement, with many large tables and a well organized and posted schedule of games of all kinds, from RPGs to tabletop miniatures to board games. The staff and owners are friendly, helpful people, even if occasionally the place smells a bit like a locker room despite the large size. I've never met a single person there who expressed a desire to publish any kind of gaming material at all, much less D&D material.


I understand fully that you personally may not know anyone who is passionate about D&D, or whose livelihood has been threatened by the current situation. It's a big planet. People have varying degrees of interest in D&D, just as people have varying degrees of interest in politics or football. We all get that. But I hope you can understand that within this big world, there are plenty of people who's favorite hobby and/or paycheck depends on the decisions made by WotC.I'm not claiming that my experience is exclusive of anyone else's, or that people who want to publish their D&D material do not exist. I just think, based on my experience over many years, that this is a fringe within a fringe. Something a person might be successful at for a while, but not something most people could hope to make a living doing. A person is free to make a go of whatever business venture they choose, but smart money says to look for a broader possible customer base if you hope to make a successful business out of an idea.

Xion_Anistu-san
2008-12-30, 09:52 PM
I was going to say they need to make more videogames, but I actually don't want to play a 4e videogame.
What you don't like World of Warcraft?

KKL
2008-12-30, 10:01 PM
What you don't like World of Warcraft?

HAHA ITS FUNNY BECAUSE 4E IS LIKE WORLD OF WARCRAFT HAHAHA GOOD JOB

No, why did you revive a topic just to make a baseless and unnessecary crack against 4e.

Thurbane
2008-12-30, 10:02 PM
What you don't like World of Warcraft?
http://danketoan.com/forum/images/smilies/Generic/rimshot.gif

Weiser_Cain
2008-12-31, 01:33 PM
What you don't like World of Warcraft?

I quit WoW saying it needed to be more like DnD as I really wanted to multiclass my Wizard with ten levels of Warlock.