Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Chris Goodwin]

18 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

You should be asking that question of Opal, not me. The lack of third party buy-in was one of the various reasons that I didn't enumerate.

 

My question was largely rhetorical. 

 

11 minutes ago, Opal said:

The hope was obviously that 3pps would sign onto the toxic GSL to grasp the coattails of the runaway success that 4e theoretically could have been had the success of D&D ever had anything to do with how good a TTRPG it was. 

 

"Make a better product" often fails - marketing and legal shenanigans are at least as successful. 

 

And luck. 5e's success was 100% accidental market timing.

 

Good luck is when it rains soup and you have a truckload of buckets.  

 

It's possible Ryan Dancey had some idea of how wild the ecosystems around the various games would get, but maybe even he didn't.  

 

But seriously... we've asked the Hero Games guys why they never published adventures, and they answered: adventures do not sell.  Not to the extent Hero Games would need them to.  And -- as I may or may have not said in this thread, again I don't remember and am not really feeling like going back and looking -- while Jason Walters has made it as easy as pie to publish third party products for the HERO System, you still have to ask first, and asking is a barrier, however small that barrier is.  

[Ninja-Bear]

Thought for the day: If corporations are evil and I work for one then am I a Punch-Clock Villain?

[Chris Goodwin]

How about malignant?  Tumors aren't evil, but they can sure cause a lot of trouble, and even kill you. 

 

I think the best we can hope for is for corporations to be benign.  I'm not sure we can say Hasbro is. 

[Duke Bushido]

On 1/23/2023 at 7:47 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Thought for the day: If corporations are evil and I work for one then am I a Punch-Clock Villain?

 

 

Yes; obviously. 

 

I am reminded of that scene from whatever British comedy that was with the two Nazi officers:

 

"Ar...  Are we the _bad guys_?!"

 

That sort of thing, 

 

 

However-  and I cannot stress this enough-  corporations are not _evil_ (and no; I dont want to hear "except for Nestle or RJ Reynolds or anyone else- that is a whole different discussion for somewhere else).

They are just doing corporation things.

 

People are doing people things.  Sharks are doing shark things.

Companies are doing company things.

 

People who attempt to make oets out of companies tend to learn the same lessons as people who attempt to make pets out of bears.  Sometimes nothing bad happens.

 

Most times, you get bit.

 

A lot.

 

If you remember that you cant make a pet out of a business, the lines stay clear, and no one gets bit.

 

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

And luck. 5e's success was 100% accidental market timing.

 

 

They were clever about reaching out to gaming youtubers and webcomics guys, and promoting the game through that.  But yeah timing, it hit the heart of the geek culture wave and as a result people who ordinarily would never have played, gave D&D 5 a shot, so you had "celebrity" gamers doing stuff on youtube.

[Old Man]

11 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Regardless of the motivations, WotC did something that really upset a lot of people.  They took away that safe harbor.  (Honestly, I'm kinda pissed over that, because I wrote some OGL stuff, and "published" it in forum posts here and there and occasionally on my Google drive.  Nothing to do with any WotC intellectual property directly, but I'm not sure of its status now.)

 

There are so many ways WotC has managed to upset people:

 

1. They reneged on a deal.

2. They intend to put all 3pp out of business.

3. They intend to destroy 5e D&D.

4. They want to monopolize D&D when their track record of supporting 5e and MtG is abysmal.

5. They are drastically increasing costs for the player base.

6. They've been blatantly lying about all of this.

 

I'm sure I've missed some.  But it's been really astonishing to see how sideways this all went, and how quickly.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Given how badly WOTC is handling Magic The Gathering, its no surprise they are messing up D&D as well

[Hugh Neilson]

11 hours ago, Grailknight said:

 

You should be asking that question of Opal, not me. The lack of third party buy-in was one of the various reasons that I didn't enumerate.

 

11 hours ago, Opal said:

The hope was obviously that 3pps would sign onto the toxic GSL to grasp the coattails of the runaway success that 4e theoretically could have been had the success of D&D ever had anything to do with how good a TTRPG it was.

 

To me, the lesson of 4e was "slapping a D&D logo on it will not automatically cause gamers to change". If 4e had captured the gamers, and they all moved away from 3e, third party publishers would either have to stop publishing (not enough market for 3e material if 3e is obsolete) or move into 4e.

 

There's a chicken and egg element here.  AD&D 1e and 2e did quite all right with no OGL.  Many games did. But WOTC realized they needed adventures, and they did not want to publish them.  Meanwhile third party publishers just filed off the D&D serial numbers and published adventures. So OGL legitimized those 3rd party adventures - and hoped that this would be the focus of 3pp.

 

Then they moved to 4e and decided they wanted to publish more adventures (turns out older gamers have more money and less time, so buying rather than designing adventures is more popular - the market changed), so we'll shut down Dungeon Magazine (now licensed to Paizo anyway) and remove the OGL.  SURPRISE - Paizo did not lay down and die, but leveraged that OGL to publish Pathfinder and keep a version of 3e alive and well.  There were gamers who kept playing 2e, 1e and BECMI, but they didn't have a lot of published support.  Switch, or do it yourself.

 

Now there were gamers who liked 3e more than 4e and did not have to switch to keep access to other published resources.  If 4e had been recognized as a better game, a lot of gamers would have moved there, and Paizo would not have had the same market available.  But many gamers did not like the 4e model, so they stuck with "3e under a new publisher". Lack of an OGL for 4e did not hurt WOTC nearly as much as the existence of an OGL for 3e enabling their competitors.

 

5e brought back an OGL, but, although 5e did much better than 4e, it did not seem to hurt Paizo, who kept right on publishing 3e even when they had the option of moving to 5e.  It doesn't seem like any major 3pp would threaten to continue 5e when D&D moves into 6e.  And Paizo made a brilliant move saying "hey, come publish for our game instead of starting a 5e clone to compete against it".

 

What did Paizo have to lose?  If shutting down the OGL means other publishers can't keep producing 3e-based product, it means they can't either.  Their mechanics aren't really their IP anyway.

 

But now, of course, WOTC has a marketing problem.  Paizo has exacerbated that through their own shrewd marketing.
 

 

[Steve]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

To me, the lesson of 4e was "slapping a D&D logo on it will not automatically cause gamers to change". If 4e had captured the gamers, and they all moved away from 3e, third party publishers would either have to stop publishing (not enough market for 3e material if 3e is obsolete) or move into 4e.

 

There's a chicken and egg element here.  AD&D 1e and 2e did quite all right with no OGL.  Many games did. But WOTC realized they needed adventures, and they did not want to publish them.  Meanwhile third party publishers just filed off the D&D serial numbers and published adventures. So OGL legitimized those 3rd party adventures - and hoped that this would be the focus of 3pp.

 

Then they moved to 4e and decided they wanted to publish more adventures (turns out older gamers have more money and less time, so buying rather than designing adventures is more popular - the market changed), so we'll shut down Dungeon Magazine (now licensed to Paizo anyway) and remove the OGL.  SURPRISE - Paizo did not lay down and die, but leveraged that OGL to publish Pathfinder and keep a version of 3e alive and well.  There were gamers who kept playing 2e, 1e and BECMI, but they didn't have a lot of published support.  Switch, or do it yourself.

 

Now there were gamers who liked 3e more than 4e and did not have to switch to keep access to other published resources.  If 4e had been recognized as a better game, a lot of gamers would have moved there, and Paizo would not have had the same market available.  But many gamers did not like the 4e model, so they stuck with "3e under a new publisher". Lack of an OGL for 4e did not hurt WOTC nearly as much as the existence of an OGL for 3e enabling their competitors.

 

5e brought back an OGL, but, although 5e did much better than 4e, it did not seem to hurt Paizo, who kept right on publishing 3e even when they had the option of moving to 5e.  It doesn't seem like any major 3pp would threaten to continue 5e when D&D moves into 6e.  And Paizo made a brilliant move saying "hey, come publish for our game instead of starting a 5e clone to compete against it".

 

What did Paizo have to lose?  If shutting down the OGL means other publishers can't keep producing 3e-based product, it means they can't either.  Their mechanics aren't really their IP anyway.

 

But now, of course, WOTC has a marketing problem.  Paizo has exacerbated that through their own shrewd marketing.
 

 

Like the webcomic Penny Arcade pointed out, D&D is a culture, not a brand. WOTC was already making money hand over fist thanks to MTG and D&D, but that wasn’t good enough. Oh no. The suits at the top (who aren’t gamers by the accounts I’ve read) wanted to have more money flowing into their coffers and boost their share price and annual bonuses.

 

Paizo: Come play with us! We support the gaming culture and want to keep going with what’s been working. Buy books from us and the other creators you like and keep on playing.

 

WOTC: We aren’t making enough money off this game system and want to charge everyone at every game table a monthly fee to play with our new VTT and access our digital libraries. If you don’t have a DM, we’ll even provide an AI to act as one. Oh, we’re also going to kill the OGL that brought us to the top of the TTRPG world and gave D20 mechanics about 85% of the TTRPG market because it isn’t bringing _us_ enough of the money being spent on gaming out there. All your dollars belong to us.

 

WOTC caused themselves a self-inflicted wound by deeply angering the RPG fandom and Paizo skillfully stabbed them in the face while they were down.

 

Well played, Paizo. Well played.

[Hugh Neilson]

23 minutes ago, Steve said:

Like the webcomic Penny Arcade pointed out, D&D is a culture, not a brand. WOTC was already making money hand over fist thanks to MTG and D&D, but that wasn’t good enough. Oh no. The suits at the top (who aren’t gamers by the accounts I’ve read) wanted to have more money flowing into their coffers and boost their share price and annual bonuses.

 

Paizo: Come play with us! We support the gaming culture and want to keep going with what’s been working. Buy books from us and the other creators you like and keep on playing.

 

WOTC: We aren’t making enough money off this game system and want to charge everyone at every game table a monthly fee to play with our new VTT and access our digital libraries. If you don’t have a DM, we’ll even provide an AI to act as one. Oh, we’re also going to kill the OGL that brought us to the top of the TTRPG world and gave D20 mechanics about 85% of the TTRPG market because it isn’t bringing _us_ enough of the money being spent on gaming out there. All your dollars belong to us.

 

WOTC caused themselves a self-inflicted wound by deeply angering the RPG fandom and Paizo skillfully stabbed them in the face while they were down.

 

Well played, Paizo. Well played.

 

I think Paizo took full advantage of the situation. However, what does their version of the OGL actually give away?  Either rights that no one owned anyway (on the basis that game mechanics cannot be copywritten) or rights that they don't actually own (as the core mechanics of their game are 3e D&D).  The 3e OGL allowed use of a recognized brand (D&D) and of what became a second recognized brand (d20 system). Looks like Paizo will allow use of their Pathfinder brand, which at least has gamer cred, but not broader public recognition.

 

When was D&D not the clear market leader in TTRPGs? Is there (has there ever been) even a Pepsi to their Coke or a Wendys to their McDonalds?

[Ternaugh]

7 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I think Paizo took full advantage of the situation. However, what does their version of the OGL actually give away?  Either rights that no one owned anyway (on the basis that game mechanics cannot be copywritten) or rights that they don't actually own (as the core mechanics of their game are 3e D&D).  The 3e OGL allowed use of a recognized brand (D&D) and of what became a second recognized brand (d20 system). Looks like Paizo will allow use of their Pathfinder brand, which at least has gamer cred, but not broader public recognition.

 

When was D&D not the clear market leader in TTRPGs? Is there (has there ever been) even a Pepsi to their Coke or a Wendys to their McDonalds?

 

 

The original OGL allowed the use of certain background items of the D&D setting, including the ability to reference specific character classes, races, and spells. 

The OGL would allow the referencing of Bigby's Hand spell, for example, but wouldn't cover a "Divinyl's Hand of Touching"* spell created by a third-party with different effects and flavor text. 

If Paizo has eliminated all references to the D&D setting materials in Pathfinder 2e, and replaced them with their own setting, then an OGR license from them would allow a third-party to use that setting material for their own derivative works.

 

 

 

 

*Effect is self-only, of course.

 

[Old Man]

52 minutes ago, Steve said:

WOTC caused themselves a self-inflicted wound by deeply angering the RPG fandom and Paizo skillfully stabbed them in the face while they were down.

 

Well played, Paizo. Well played.

 

To be fair, this was an act of self defense after WOTC, suddenly infected with corporate greed vampirism, stabbed Paizo in the back. 

 

 

34 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

When was D&D not the clear market leader in TTRPGs?

 

2011-2014, during the D&D 4e debacle.

 

Looking at this chart it's kind of interesting how World of Darkness just fell off a cliff.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Looking at this chart it's kind of interesting how World of Darkness just fell off a cliff.

 

I could never figure out why it was so popular to begin with.  I don't mean this as an attack on the system or the genre, just that it seemed like a pretty niche game, a small audience product.

[Hugh Neilson]

 

For almost 3 years after release, 4e was the top seller.

 

Pathfinder then took over for about 3 years until 5e was launched.

 

While I think that is as much attributable to WOTC pushing much of the market away with dislike for 4e, Pathfinder is at least the Pepsi/Wendys.

 

I am pretty sure D&D got rid of Bigby and a lot of other wizard names in the spells by 3e, but I may be misrecalling that and the Pathfinder shift.  Looks like Bigby is back in 5e though.

7 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

I could never figure out why it was so popular to begin with.  I don't mean this as an attack on the system or the genre, just that it seemed like a pretty niche game, a small audience product.

 

That description could apply to RPGs in general, to be fair.

[Ternaugh]

27 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

For almost 3 years after release, 4e was the top seller.

 

Pathfinder then took over for about 3 years until 5e was launched.

 

While I think that is as much attributable to WOTC pushing much of the market away with dislike for 4e, Pathfinder is at least the Pepsi/Wendys.

 

I am pretty sure D&D got rid of Bigby and a lot of other wizard names in the spells by 3e, but I may be misrecalling that and the Pathfinder shift.  Looks like Bigby is back in 5e though.

 

That description could apply to RPGs in general, to be fair.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

That description could apply to RPGs in general, to be fair.

 

Oh, I agree, but this is a niche of RPGs, its like frisbee golf being a minor attraction, then a small portion of winter frisbee golf or something becoming really popular.  Where did that come from?

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Oh, I agree, but this is a niche of RPGs, its like frisbee golf being a minor attraction, then a small portion of winter frisbee golf or something becoming really popular.  Where did that come from?

I’m not sure if Vampire the Masquerade was directly influenced by Interview with a Vampire but those novels were a hit. The. The movie a hit. You got to play an “evil” race and it was totally different from typical fantasy.  So I’m going to say a lucky confluence of different ideas.

[assault]

VtM, and the World of Darkness in general, appealed to a milieu of edgy Emo/Goth types.

When that milieu faded, so did it.

Riding fads is lucrative, but risky.

[Opal]

17 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Thought for the day: If corporations are evil and I work for one then am I a Punch-Clock Villain?

You're a minion, obviously.

 

10 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

When was D&D not the clear market leader in TTRPGs?

Mostly when it was not being published.

 

Late in the 90s when TSR was collapsing (mainly mismanagement) and Storyteller riding high.

 

Early 2010s with the "Essentials" softcover/boxed line and Next Playtest.

Though, arguably, Pathfinder /was also just D&D/

[Chris Goodwin]

A lot of people played it as Vampions.  

 

Dean Shomshak wrote the Cabal of Flamboyant Justice, a Mage the Ascension chantry whose purpose was to perform magic openly by pretending to be superheroes.  It was awesome! 

[Steve]

10 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

A lot of people played it as Vampions.  

 

Dean Shomshak wrote the Cabal of Flamboyant Justice, a Mage the Ascension chantry whose purpose was to perform magic openly by pretending to be superheroes.  It was awesome! 

That does sound awesome! I found the posting where it is linked, but the download link doesn’t work.

 

I could imagine insane Marauders warping reality to make a superhero paradigm around themselves wherever they go.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 1/22/2023 at 9:45 PM, Opal said:

WotC tried that.  

It failed.

(OK, technically it simultaneously made a better product /and/ tried to kill the OGL)

 

4e?  

[Opal]

"Since that didn't work, this time we'll kill the OGL and put out an even worse product!"

 

 

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]