Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
Whether or not something is profitable does not weigh even a little on my determination of whether or not it is a good idea. I am sure that every day at Wizards HQ, the fact that TSR failed is used as justification for the idea that fluff-heavy nuanced views of moral questions don't sell. The alternative is still a set of terrible, potentially damaging ideas being spread to teenagers with the imprimatur of Official Content on the cover.
I agree with you that WotC's staff not only need to impress their grand Potato-Headed overlords, they also live with the knowledge of just how mismanaged TSR was. But publishing fluff-heavy, nuanced books wasn't what caused TSR to fail. Publishing fluff-heavy, nuanced books that were expensive to produce, and selling them for a fraction of the cost, caused TSR to fail. I remember Chris Pramas writing about this a little over ten years ago, about how WotC sent auditors to Lake Geneva and were astonished by the mess that Williams left the company in.

The big difference between WotC under Hasbro, and TSR, is that if Hasbro were to decide to shut down the D&D tabletop RPG because of poor sales, they would still keep the rights, and produce card games, video games, apps for generating characters or magic items, and probably a line of action figures. If TSR had gone under and not been rescued by WotC, D&D would have died out, kept alive by a few thousand fans, but that would be it. Tabletop RPGs would continue to exist, with SJG and White Wolf picking up the slack.

In terms of monster descriptions, you're right, these ones are intended to paint Humanoids in a disturbing light. I view it as part and parcel of the horrible world building that was part of the first wave of 4E products. I can not stand the fluff in the products that came out before PHB 2.