Wizards of the Coast Announces One D&D

[Cygnia]

 

[Duke Bushido]

Be a lot more pressure on them if the guys addicted to Magic: the Crack Habit threw in with a boycott of sorts.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Players do seem to be very unhappy with how MTG is working.  I used to love that game, played it for hours every day.  Then I got annoyed at the rule changes and card redesigns and everything and just quit, sold all my cards.

[Michael Hopcroft]

I didn't hear his reasoning, but at the Gencon where D&D 3.0 and the whole OGL phenomenon began, Villains & Vigilantes developer Jeff Dee was strongly opposed to it. I don't recall his reasoning, but my guess was that involved the efforts by WOTC at the time to turn as many companies/publishers as possible into promotion sources for D&D.

 

It may have turned out that way, but only to a limited extent. They certainly did not expect M&M to build its own engine on the core of D20, and when they launched 4e they never in a million years expected their magazine contractor would turn around and release Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) and build it into a juggernaut.

 

I'm surprised this didn't happen in 2009.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I didn't hear his reasoning, but at the Gencon where D&D 3.0 and the whole OGL phenomenon began, Villains & Vigilantes developer Jeff Dee was strongly opposed to it. I don't recall his reasoning, but my guess was that involved the efforts by WOTC at the time to turn as many companies/publishers as possible into promotion sources for D&D.

 

It may have turned out that way, but only to a limited extent. They certainly did not expect M&M to build its own engine on the core of D20, and when they launched 4e they never in a million years expected their magazine contractor would turn around and release Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) and build it into a juggernaut.

 

I'm surprised this didn't happen in 2009.

 

Every third party product, whether it was for D&D or not, helped D&D 3.0, 3.5, and 5e become the successes they were.  Especially 5e.  

 

WotC are wrecking everyone who spent 23 years relying on the OGL and statements from Wizards that they wouldn't and couldn't do what they're trying to do with it.

[MrAgdesh]

11 hours ago, Shoug said:

 Hero's fatal flaw isn't the perceived learning curve, it's the frontloading of all of the creative work on top of the learning curve. It's not even really a game, it's a game system. A system that lets you (read: requires that you) define all the basic assumptions and parameters of your game before you can even start character creation. You've got to learn the game so you can make the game so you can finally play the game.

This is a really good point.

 

There is an inherent problem with Hero that in order to make it a great game you first have to have played it - extensively - and learned where the abuse lies. For you, as your view of abuse might be very different to the next guy's. Unless you are really initially hooked on the game system you will probably abandon it in favour of less intense systems that you don't need to know inside out before you can even run them. 

 

I've known groups that tried it, declared "Speed is Broken!" and then went off to play something else rather than fix Speed. I know this because I bought all of one guy's books as spares.

 

I've seen some threads that say Hero's fault is that whilst it has plenty of sourcebooks it doesn't really have any scenarios to help you  get into the game and 'hit the floor running'.

 

The problem here is that even if there were a scenario written, it would most likely still need redesign by the GM to fit into his own particular game view. It's not like D&D where if you buy an "adventure for character levels X-Y" you know pretty much you'll get what you purchased. With Hero there is a lot more open to interpretation and that would be the case even if you specify "An adventure for Fantasy Hero for Standard Heroic characters". Using Turakian Age for example, if I were ever to run it, I'd have to redesign all of the Renowned of Ambrethel, as they are far too tough for my tastes.

 

Now, most GMs say that they all tweak purchased adventures - to some degree -  to fit what they want, but I'm talking major re-writes with Hero.

[Ragitsu]

On 1/10/2023 at 11:12 PM, mallet said:

They would also sell this as being environmentally friendly. No physical books, means no cutting down tress for paper. No international shipping and delivery using gas and oil, no printing with harmful chemicals and glues and dyes. Plus it would save them tons of cash. No need for all those printing and international shipping expenses, especially in these days of supply chain disruption. No need for a whole department in the company that deals with publishing, printing, shipping, storage and delivery. All that money saved on wages.

 

 

I prefer to own that which I purchase. This "digital only" future isn't all sunshine and rainbows. After the BS WOTC once pulled with their PDFs, I have zero interest in trusting them with insubstantial content.

 

Plus, part of the charm of tabletop gaming is thumbing through a tome...that organic factor.

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

 

I prefer to own that which I purchase. This "digital only" future isn't all sunshine and rainbows. After the BS WOTC once pulled with their PDFs, I have zero interest in trusting them with insubstantial content.

 

Plus, part of the charm of tabletop gaming is thumbing through a tome...that organic factor.

 

 

Agreed wholeheartedly.

 

Thw difference between a player who _will_ is spend a weekend or two hitting that Print Screen button and onw who won't is not in their desire for breadth of access, but comes exclusively from the depth of the burn they suffered.

[Cygnia]

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Plus, part of the charm of tabletop gaming is thumbing through a tome...that organic factor.

Also being able to smack a player with the sourcebook if they deserve it.

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Cygnia said:

Also being able to smack a player with the sourcebook if they deserve it.

 

It's not like you can't still smack them with a 24" monitor.

 

I'm one of those people who likes physical books to a fault (as evidenced by the piles of them in my dwelling, in other people's dwellings, and in storage) but we have to keep in mind that this is gradually going away.  More recent generations are used to an existence without physical books and prefer the portability and searchability of PDFs.  This does not preclude a preference for downloading the file as opposed to submitting to an online subscription model, though they are also more used to the latter.

[Ragitsu]

18 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

It's not like you can't still smack them with a 24" monitor.

 

Well, the book is both cheaper* and will require less cleanup after the deed is done.

 

*Unless it's an out-of-print specimen, anyhow.

[Cygnia]

22 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

It's not like you can't still smack them with a 24" monitor.

 

Not with my back!

[Ragitsu]

31 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Not with my back!

 

I remember this one time when I lugged a 19" NEC monitor to a bus stop. Ho-lee crap.

[Asperion]

It seems as though they are going down the same road that video games went down. Difference is that there's more companies making those games and they did it over a period of several years, not all at one time. Even in video games,  if they pulled the trick WOTC did,  players would have protested,  possibly to the point of not buying the product. Let's see what happens to WOTC now with both buyers and developers. Those developers are where they make the majority of their products, hence the greatest portion of their sales and income. 

[Opal]

9 hours ago, MrAgdesh said:

It's not like D&D where if you buy an "adventure for character levels X-Y" you know pretty much you'll get what you purchased.

I still drop by D&D spaces, and a very common topic of discussion/hand-wringing is how to "fix" published adventures, customize them to the "OP level" of your party, etc.  You can find major re-writes by fans and influencers on line.

 

Difference is Hero has (is) tools that let you do that.

 

I guess this is relevant to the discussion due to D&D's persistent market dominance, and it's tempting to think there was something other than name recognition and timing to explain it.

 

They are more than adequate explanations, imho.

[Scott Ruggels]

Interesting Financial Analysis of Hasbro and WoTC
 

 

[Old Man]

28 minutes ago, Opal said:

I guess this is relevant to the discussion due to D&D's persistent market dominance, and it's tempting to think there was something other than name recognition and timing to explain it.

 

They are more than adequate explanations, imho.

 

D&D is successful in spite of its mechanics, not because of them.  That's the power of branding and production values, and WotC is currently destroying the power of its brand.

[Scott Ruggels]

Interesting Communication to D&D Shorts of YouTube:

 

[Old Man]

39 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Interesting Communication to D&D Shorts of YouTube:

 

 

Came here to post this.  Two takeaways: First, actual WotC employees clearly have no respect for WotC management otherwise we would not be having so many leaks, and two, if WotC management is focused solely on D&D Beyond subscriptions as a measure of success, anyone with a D&D Beyond account can easily make their feelings known by deleting that account.

[Scott Ruggels]

Apparently, once that info got out, so many people went to cancel their account, the web page crashed temporarily:

 

[Steve]

A company must be hit hard in their wallet, often repeatedly, before they listen.

 

Cancelled accounts are a good way to get Hasbro to pay attention that they have a problem on their hands.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Took me like a week to shut down my Paypal account, it kept telling me they couldn't complete the operation

[Duke Bushido]

Folks, if there are any D20 print books you've been wanting to buy, now might be a good time to pick them up.

 

I have waffled about T-20 for a year or two now, and went ahead and bit the bullet on a used copy-  paid ten dollars and postage for a near-mint just over a month ago. (Not related to this DnD thing; I just happened to have some mad money at that moment).

 

That same seller had four copies (still has two), and the price is now seventy bucks.  Even poor or ungraded copies are fetching stupid prices from some sellers.  Sellers that six months ago had them for 40 bucks and under (to explain: I am not cheap, per se, but for 40 bucks, I can buy the disk with the entire product line in PDF.  Since all I wanted was the rule book to add to my Traveller collection, I decided I would pay up to half the price of that disk for a reasonably crisp physical copy of just the rules) suddenly have those same books for 55 bucks _and up_.  I  think this whole fiasco has them expecting a surge in demand for copies of these various d20 OGL games before wizards either republishes them as their own or scares original publishers from doing reprints.  And of course, the nuts that think wizards can somehow sieze or prevent the sale of extant used copies are panicky enough to buy eight copies od somethinf at an inflated prive that they wouldn't have bought a single copy of a year ago.

 

I also think I will not be able to replace my D20 Silver Age Sentinels hardback (don't know what happened to it: just suddenly didn't own it anymore), as they were rare and pricey before all this started (seems,most people bought Tri-Stat, and most who bought d20  versions bought softcovers).

 

Though to be honest, I will never _play_ T20 any more than I _played_ SAS.  As someone pointed out above, DnD didn't blow up huge because of the mechanics; the mechanics are the biggest pile of crap ever published, and will always be the worst part of the "system."  Saving throws _exist_ because the mechanics are so awful.

 

But SAS was gorgeous to look at, and had a lot of inspirational material.  And T20...  Well, I am just a Traveller nut, at least so long as it wasn't written by (or too-heavily influenced by Fugate).

 

Getting back to the sellers preparing for misguided panic buying of d20 material:

 

Do not think for a minute that people aren't that stupid when they get worried!  Anybody else have to _travel_ to buy toilet paper a couple of years ago?