Who Makes WotC's Adventures?

There are now three large hardcover adventures for D&D 5th Edition. There's the two-part Tyranny of Dragons campaign produced by Kobold Press; there's Princes of the Apocalypse, from Sasquatch Game Studios; and there's the imminent Out of the Abyss, from Green Ronin publishing. All of these are official, hardcover adventures produced for WotC by third party companies. But how does that actually work? What is the relationship between the company producing the products and the company publishing them? WotC's Jeremy Crawford told me yesterday that the term "outsourcing" is innacurate when it comes to describing this arrangement.

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If we go back a bit to when I asked Kobold Press' Wolfgang Baur about the process, he told me that "the 5E adventures are produced as a combination of studio work and WotC oversight." He went on to describe it in a little more detail, highlighting a to-and-fro between the companies -- "we'd do some portion of the work, then we would get feedback from WotC on Realmslore, or story beats, or mechanics. Then we did more of the design, and got feedback from swarms of playtesters. Then we turned over another version for feedback on the art and layout. And so forth. It was iterative..." So collaboration clearly takes place all the way through the process.

He describes Kobold Press role as "the heavy lifting in design, development, and editing" with WotC having "crucial input and set the direction for what they wanted".

Moving ahead to now, WotC Jeremy Crawford observes that "It's bizarre to see a few posters on ENWorld mistake our [D&D 5E] collaborations as outsourcing. Each book has been a team effort." The input from WotC isn't just greenlighting the book at various stages; as Jeremy tells us "Our reviews are deep. We create the story & the concept art. We write portions of the books. We design mechanics. Etc.!" As he also points out, the credits page of each book tells us who contributed to each.

So there we have it. These books aren't outsourced to third parties in any traditional sense of that word; the books are written as a collaborative effort with writing and more done by both companies.

 

[Pauper]

If this is true, it's a lot less easy to explain why the modules are so ill-suited to Organized Play, containing mechanics, items, and situations that don't work well in Adventurer's League, which has to be considered the largest D&D Fifth Edition campaign.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

It would be cool if Crawford would give a bit more insight to the process. I hope you can get a interview set up as you suggested in your Twitter conversation Morrus.

 

[bedir than]

If this is true, it's a lot less easy to explain why the modules are so ill-suited to Organized Play, containing mechanics, items, and situations that don't work well in Adventurer's League, which has to be considered the largest D&D Fifth Edition campaign.

I'm confused as to why you think that working hand-in-hand with Wizards makes an AP less likely to work in Organized Play than something that is purely outsourced.

 

[Osgood]

While big campaign-length adventures aren't my thing, I think the approach of partnering with other companies makes a lot of sense.

The D&D team just isn't large enough to handle publishing a lot of content... and I'm pretty sure that's because it's not profitable enough. Working with smaller companies allows them to put things out in a way that makes sense and money with the team they have. I imagine it works well for the companies involved, since they get to reach a broader audience and don't assume all the risk themselves. The fact that they are opening this relationship up with companies to produce setting material suggests this will be the model going forward and that the only type of products that are made solely in-house will be core books (like a Monster Manual 2).

 

[Jester David]

Amusingly, I was just having a debate on this on the WotC forums.

I think Crawford is exaggerating the impact WotC has on the product. Their role may have been intensive, but it was still managerial. And I doubt everyone in the WotC credits in the cover of the books had a large influence on the product. They have weekly phonecalls with N-space to review and discuss Sword Coast Legends, but that doesn't mean WotC contributed a meaningful port
But that's to be expected, since they want the adventures to seem official.

It doesn't change my perspective on the adventures. The quality is decent and the adventures themselves are adequate.

 

[Pauper]

I'm confused as to why you think that working hand-in-hand with Wizards makes an AP less likely to work in Organized Play than something that is purely outsourced.

I can see why you'd be confused.

If the modules were 'outsourced', in the usual sense of the term,
then it would be easier to understand why they don't work well
as Organized Play adventures -- the developers wouldn't have any
real reason to consider OP unless it was part of the contract.

What Crawford is saying is that WotC has significant feedback and
input on the adventures, and that's why it makes less sense that
they work less well with WotC's official Organized Play campaign,
especially given that there are WotC employees with OP responsibilities
who could be tapped for feedback. If WotC does have significant
influence over the content and structure of the published hard-cover
adventures, it's a lot harder to justify why they don't work well in
WotC's main marketing arm for D&D, Encounters and Expeditions.

I suspect Jester Canuck is correct, and Crawford is exaggerating
the degree to which WotC exerts editorial control over the 3rd
party adventures.

--
Pauper

 

[callinostros]

He might not call it outsourcing but it is. Every outsourced product always has feedback from the company that controls the IP. This is not a unique thing and is part of the process of outsourcing.

verb (used with object), outsourced, outsourcing.
1. (of a company or organization) to purchase (goods) or subcontract (services) from an outside supplier or source.

 

[epithet]

If this is true, it's a lot less easy to explain why the modules are so ill-suited to Organized Play, containing mechanics, items, and situations that don't work well in Adventurer's League, which has to be considered the largest D&D Fifth Edition campaign.

I don't follow your train of thought here.

These modules are campaigns for a regular group to pursue across a span of several levels and many sessions. They're made to appeal to the people who will buy them for years to come, not to pick-up groups in an organised play situation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Adventurer's League modules are free, aren't they?

Each of these hardcovers is designed to be as attractive a year or 5 years from now as it is at the time it is released. It would be a really bad idea to compromise that in order to feed into the current "season" of the Adventurer's League.

I have no personal experience with organized play situations, but from what I've heard you can't really consider it a campaign. Its a party made up of whoever's there, sometimes running through the same adventure one or more of them did last time, right? Doesn't seem to have the coherence needed to really be a "campaign."

 

[DLIMedia]

This is what' got me confused, specifically about Sasquach... They are creating a WotC licensed product, yet they don't have their own license and are proceeding with the expectation that their upcoming Thule 5E product can be published under the OGL. Those two things seem a bit contradictory... Is Sasquach licensed to create 5E content or not?