Who Makes WotC's Adventures?

Pauper · Jul 23, 2015

epithet said:
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.

But they could be optimized, so to speak, for Organized Play without
harming their ability to be useful to folks buying them for home campaigns.

Example: Princes of the Apocalypse introduced wingwear, a cool-seeming magical
item powered by elemental forces. But the item is recharged by being exposed to
elemental energy in an elemental node, and the purpose of the campaign is to
destroy the elemental nodes. Because there was no way for players to recharge the
wingwear within the context of Adventurer's League, the items caused plenty of
controversy as 'trap items', as possessing a permanent magic item might, in some
situations, make your character ineligible to take a new magic item found in an
adventure. A simple sidebar discussing ways that wingwear could be recharged
without the use of an elemental node (by expending spell slots, for instance), or
a clarification that wingwear wasn't meant to be a permanent magic item (which
ended up waiting for the Season 3 update of the Player's Guide) would have
resolved the problem for Organized Play without hurting, and by arguably even helping,
the use of the adventure for home games.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Adventurer's League modules are free, aren't they?

They are free in the sense that, once you're affiliated with a store and get the
site password, you can download and run the adventures in that store, or online by
affliiating with the Online Region. Technically you're not allowed to run Expeditions
adventures as pure 'home game' adventures, as that violates the license by which
you get access to the adventures, so in that sense, they're not 'free to use'.

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 guess I don't really see how clarifying rules with an existing campaign in mind
would actually hurt the adventure's playability in a home campaign -- the home game
DM would simply have to decide whether to use the AL-targeted material or not, just
as she currently decides whether to place the events in locations in the Forgotten
Realms as written, or in some other campaign world of her own choosing.

The benefit would be a much better Organized Play experience, which WotC is
explicitly using to try to bring new players into the hobby, and from which they
get extra sales of their hardcover books. In that sense, supporting OP with the
hardcover adventures is a no-brainer, since not only are new players likely to be
exposed to the adventures in the context of an OP campaign, but they'll find the OP
experience to be familiar and helpful in learning the game, rather than jarring
because the home game experience is so radically different from what they
played at that convention or in the free-play area of that game store they visited.

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."

Most OP games run at a game store or with the affiliation of a game store, and thus do
tend to feature a group of regulars who play together repeatedly -- that's pretty much
the definition of a 'campaign', along with the overarching plot that connects the
individual adventures together within a storyline season. It's not strictly an 'adventure
path' that takes you from level 1 to 20 in the Paizo sense, but if you're playing a hardback
adventure from Encounters and beyond, it's not really that much different than playing
in someone's living room with a big group, some of whom show up more often than not,
and others who sometimes invite friends or dates to play along.

Conventions are a different animal, I'll grant, but OP organizing at conventions is
starting to gear more toward convention-special events and big multi-table adventures;
Adventurers League at GenCon, for instance, is going to have both the Season 2 and
the Season 3 Epic module run there, though there will still be a number of 'normal'
Expeditions modules available as well. And part of the benefit of Organized Play is that
you can continue to play the same set of adventures, and even the same storyline,
even if you're not playing with your regular group or DM. That's part of what makes it
an effective marketing tool. Interestingly, OP doesn't run Encounters or other hardcover
adventures at conventions, as if admitting that the hardcover adventures, though legal
for Organized Play, aren't currently the best way to attract players to the game when
you only have limited time to convince them to play.

--
Pauper

occam · Jul 23, 2015

callinostros said:
Yes, this is all mostly a matter of semantics. The underlying issue at hand is that currently WotC is suffering from the stigma of "not producing any new books of their own". Crawford is saying that they do...sort of. Crawford is trying to split hairs on the word outsourcing. Fundamentally that is what WotC is doing. He is trying to say that they aren't because of added material and oversight of the product. However, they are not really writing their own books, certainly not in the way WotC and TSR did in the old days where all the design work was done in house.

For some people "WotC designing their own books" means in-house writing and design, like the old days. For the new WotC D&D department it means "writing some but not the bulk of it". That divide is large for some people, and for those people what WotC is doing right now is definitely outsourcing, no matter how much WotC is trying to squash the idea that they are not designing their own books.

You should review your history. WotC, and TSR before them, used freelancers on a lot of products. Among many others, perhaps you've heard of Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker, Erik Mona, James Jacobs, or Jason Bulmahn, all of whom wrote for TSR/WoTC when they weren't employed there? And I'm not even getting into Dragon and Dungeon. I don't recall them ever being criticized for "not really writing their own books" before now.

This semantic argument over the meaning of the word "outsourcing" doesn't seem to be going anywhere. If what WotC is doing is outsourcing, then Paizo is also outsourcing their APs, adventures, in fact the bulk of their gaming materials, most of which isn't entirely designed and written by Paizo employees. And that's fine. I don't think the word used matters, unless it contributes to mistaken impressions about the work being done. And that's what Jeremy was trying to counter, this mistaken impression that WotC isn't "really writing their own books", in some way that's fundamentally different than what they or other gaming companies have done for a long time. WotC is exercising close editorial control over the materials they're "outsourcing", as they have for decades.

Celtavian · Jul 23, 2015

It sounds similar to what Paizo does. I believe Paizo designs the story and theme, then hires adventure designers to write one of the modules in the AP. They choose the art and maps as well. WotC is hiring freelancers to do adventure design work, but they're not outsourcing the work. It seems like the standard RPG model that most of the RPG companies follow to some degree.

justinj3x3 · Jul 23, 2015

occam said:
You should review your history. WotC, and TSR before them, used freelancers on a lot of products. Among many others, perhaps you've heard of Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker, Erik Mona, James Jacobs, or Jason Bulmahn, all of whom wrote for TSR/WoTC when they weren't employed there? And I'm not even getting into Dragon and Dungeon. I don't recall them ever being criticized for "not really writing their own books" before now.

This is a good point, and I'll give my point of view on it. This is my point of view and I am in no way saying it belongs to anyone else or that it is what is going on. Since 5th edition has been released WOTCs behavior and handling of the product has been confusing and hard to understand because of no communication from WOTC in regards to what their intention is for the D&D TTRPG line. This behavior along with comments about focusing on the brand and branching out to other platforms as well as things like marketing the TTRPG like a boardgame wreaks of corporate takeover. It causes concern that the TTRPG is going to go to the wayside. It comes off as decisions being made by guys with their suits and ties and statistics who don't even play the game. On top of that all the books (besides core) are being produced outside of WOTC and we are hearing of lay-offs, which makes it seem like the people at WOTC are being transitioned to typical corporate execs overseeing outsourced material. On top of that we get comments like the one Mearls made about books not being able to be canceled if they weren't announced and I feel like I'm talking to an attorney. All of these things with no real communication from WOTC about what they are doing and what their intentions are creates fear that Hasbro has decided to take too much of the reins. Everyone knows when corporate takes control from the creative guys the product is sure to go south. Those have been my fears and I'm glad to hear that they are contributing and writing some of the products. It makes me feel a little better, because they did an AMAZING job with 5e and I want it to be as great as it can be!

Mistwell · Jul 23, 2015

Effectively this is how I view what WOTC is doing. In addition to the permanent writing staff positions at WOTC, there are basically 2-4 floating positions at WOTC in the writing department. Instead of filling these 2-4 writing positions with one specific set of 2-4 people on a long term employment basis, they are partnering with some companies run by WOTC alumni they like to take on shorter term projects for them in collaboration with the permanent staff at WOTC. A lot of these alumni are guys who would not come to work for WOTC again on a permanent basis now that they have their own companies, but they are willing to take on a one-time project here and there (along with their smaller staff), and enjoy working with their old friends at WOTC in a collaboration. Once the project is done, WOTC moves to another alumnus-run company they like.

If these guys still worked at WOTC like they used to, nobody would think anything of it. If Person X was still working at WOTC and creating a new product along side Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford and the rest of the WOTC staff together, nobody would be claiming it was anything other than a collaborative team effort. But because Person X is now with their own company, it's being described as outsourcing even if the exact same collaborative effort is taking place between the individuals as would have taken place if they all still worked at WOTC.

To my mind, a collaborative partnership with alumni of your company on a single project basis is not the same as the connotations people normally intend to evoke with the term outsourcing.

pedr · Jul 23, 2015

I have a few counter points to that. (Edit: to justinj's post, I mean)

I think WotC has been quite clear. Not everyone agrees with the strategy but it's clear to me that the approach is:

1) Make use of the various established companies with experience writing adventures to put out one large campaign roughly every six months. This allows the company to bring its particular style to bear on an adventure, under the direction and in collaboration with designers and developers employed by WotC.

2) Create supporting material for the TRPG when there is a suitable product, rather than to a predetermined timeline - although Princes of the Apocalypse was accompanied by a free book and the next adventure will be similarly supported by some additional mechanical material in the Sword Coast book.

3) Take full advantage of the revenues available from the Dungeons and Dragons brand and the wealth of story material and IP in partnership with video and miniatures game companies. Over the life of 5e I expect that there's a prediction that this could be bring in more revenue than the TRPG so it's good sense to make full use of it - aside from anything else it can subsidise the TRPG production (as Magic, and Pokemon, have subsidised it in the past).

WotC has a reputation for frequent changes in staffing and structure - many of the layoffs are not downsizing but changes to the perceived staff need. It's quite fair to dislike WotC for that practice but it's tangential to the discussion of the future direction of the TRPG.

And, WotC is part of a publicly traded company so some of the corporate communication will necessarily be circumspect - they may really want to announce things but be restricted on timing - and one result of point 3 above is that some communication isn't for the benefit of fans of the TRPG - it's for video game or novel or Attack Wing fans and for the companies who may partner to create other D&D product.

Again, whether that's a strategy which someone agrees on or not, it seems to be what they've said they are doing, and what they've done, since the 5e launch.

pemerton · Jul 23, 2015

I agree with [MENTION=33464]pedr[/MENTION] on WotC communications: they have been pretty upfront about their publishing strategy, and their broader D&D strategy, and they seem to be implementing it. (Limited rules releases, FR-themed adventures, D&D video games, etc).

And I agree with [MENTION=6616]Maggan[/MENTION], [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION], [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] and [MENTION=39815]occam[/MENTION] on the writing thing: this is no different from the sort of freelancing that practically all RPG publishers have relied on for the whole history of the hobby. If freelance authorship counts as outsourcing then TSR was outsourcing with such classic modules as Pharaoh, Ravenloft and White Plume Mountain.

justinj3x3 · Jul 23, 2015

All your points are valid and I get all that. But when all I hear is corporate talking points and mention of nothing other than APs every so many months it's concerning. I'm so happy to hear about the Sword Coast book (which I may not buy at all) and wish they had said something like that was an intention (not a definite but an intention) earlier. I know it's paranoia, but like I said the tight-lipped approach leaves me with nothing but my own imagination. We all know that if you want to make a monster in a movie scary you don't show the monster. Our imaginations are going to fill in the blanks with things way more scary than you can produce. WOTC aren't showing me the monster. But they seem to be gradually so I'm crossing my fingers.

And again this is just my paranoid point of view.

benensky · Jul 23, 2015

Additional Insite

For what it is worth, this may help people understand the process between Sasquatch and WoC you can listen to this Tome Show Podcast:
http://www.thetomeshow.com/e/gamer-to-gamer-rich-baker/
The WoC & Sasquatch part is between Minutes 29:50 & 36:00

aramis erak · Jul 23, 2015

bedir than said:
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 think he's wondering why the level of intervention by Wizards leaves the big modules as poor fits, when the implied level of oversight should produce something that fits better.

Outsourcing in the classic sense should make the modules less tightly tied to each other; the issue here, however, is as much "These adventures are for a playstyle that is hard to use in 2-3 hour chunks." And that's something that overisght and feedback as described should reduce.