D&D 5E Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

Regarding the OGL, I would honestly be very surprised to see anything even vaguely like it again from WotC. The OGL directly enabled the product that replaced D&D as the #1 tabletop RPG, and I can easily see the suits in the executive suite pointing that out as a reason to never do anything like it again.

With that said, I would love to see some sort of licensing plan come out, as well as a solid rules about fan sites. There are other RPG companies that have managed to do licensing for their main line of products that doesn't give away the farm, but at the same time encourages active third party support. Pinnacle Entertainment's license for Savage Worlds comes to mind as a good example, and I've seen (and own) plenty of third party SW products.
 

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I don't care about digital tools. PDFs would be nice but I'm not personally upset that they aren't currently available.

However, I am concerned about the lack of new product for 5E. Over and over I read about how WotC wants to extend the life of 5th edition by avoiding splat. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of splat either but that doesn't mean they couldn't produce a bunch of stuff without splat....

Campaign settings, adventures (something besides a $50 AP), monster manuals, a book about the planes or the multiverse, etc... this could all be released without spat and would serve to satisfy the demand for new product as well as generate more interest in 5E.

5E is a fantastic version of D&D but I'm disappointed there is nothing to buy for the game other than the two APs each year. A light release schedule is a good idea but the concept is being taken way too far. Even a single standalone 32 page adventure being released every quarter would go a long way to liven things up and give people something to talk about and look forward to... just my 2 cents.
 
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Regarding the OGL, I would honestly be very surprised to see anything even vaguely like it again from WotC. The OGL directly enabled the product that replaced D&D as the #1 tabletop RPG, and I can easily see the suits in the executive suite pointing that out as a reason to never do anything like it again.

So DnD was replaced as the #1 TRPG by ......... DnD.

The King is dead, long live the King.
 

So DnD was replaced as the #1 TRPG by ......... DnD.

The King is dead, long live the King.

Not quite. Pathfinder may be descended from D&D, but there is a crucial difference - the money from sales of D&D go to WotC, the money from sales of Pathfinder go to Paizo. From a business perspective it doesn't matter that the new #1 was related to D&D in any way, it only matters that someone else is now getting the larger slice of the revenue pie, and that someone else came about directly as a result of the OGL.
 

So DnD was replaced as the #1 TRPG by ......... DnD.

The King is dead, long live the King.

Not exactly, D&D was replaced by a 3rd party clone.

Let's not be coy either...these companies hosed each other. WotC pulled the rug out from under Paizo who was ramping up and reinvesting in the official magazines they were making for WotC. In kind, Paizo broke the unspoken rule of the OGL and went into direct competition with WotC to pit 3.75e against 4e.

I'm not picking a side, I 'm just saying this was likely way uglier than business decorum allows either company to say. "Never again!" has to have been said at some level by someone within the Hasbro/WotC structure. It just remains to be seen whether that person prevails.
 

Not quite. Pathfinder may be descended from D&D, but there is a crucial difference - the money from sales of D&D go to WotC, the money from sales of Pathfinder go to Paizo. From a business perspective it doesn't matter that the new #1 was related to D&D in any way, it only matters that someone else is now getting the larger slice of the revenue pie, and that someone else came about directly as a result of the OGL.

I thought we were talking about DnD?

If DnD was just the company that made it then it died in the 90s.
 


Not exactly, D&D was replaced by a 3rd party clone.

Let's not be coy either...these companies hosed each other. WotC pulled the rug out from under Paizo who was ramping up and reinvesting in the official magazines they were making for WotC. In kind, Paizo broke the unspoken rule of the OGL and went into direct competition with WotC to pit 3.75e against 4e.

That is not true - there never was an 'unspoken rule'.

If you know your 3e history you will be able to find that Pathfinder was not the first 3e varient to go head to head with the WotC version.
 

Let's not forget that Paizo has a fantastic business model and knows how to treat it's customers.

They do seem to know how to treat customers, attract and treat talented employees, and how to crank out content. Module-wise the content cranking is stellar. Splat-wise, there is a crunch creep issue than may catch up to them as the years go by. Avoiding the pitfalls of TSR in the long-term will be their greatest challenge.
 

More D&D video games would be great, especially if done in the "updated isometric" style we see in the new Wasteland 2. I'm afraid Wizards might try to go for the FPS look of Skyrim/Fallout3, which IMO is great but not conducive to a recreation of the D&D experience (or the old classic games like the BG and IWD series).

D&D movies will never be anything other than a boondoggle. They might make nice Rifftrax fodder, but not much else.

See I dunno, I was quite interested by the concept of a Numenera game, but then I actually saw it and realized I'm quite happy having left isometric games behind after BG2. Not familiar with Wasteland 2 but a Google image search reaffirms I'm just not a fan of that style.

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that I don't play D&D with minis. In a video game I don't want to view my character like I would pushing minis around a tabletop, I want to directly identify with them through 1st or 3rd person views. YYMV, of course.

D&D movies will never be anything other than a boondoggle. They might make nice Rifftrax fodder, but not much else.

Well yeah, if Sweetpea hangs onto the rights there's no doubt about that. But if Hasbro does manage to wrench them away in court and turn them over to Universal as they're hoping to do, you bet your sweet bippy I'll go see that movie. It could be quite good if they get a halfway decent fantasy epic script - my dream is something similar in tone to Guardians of the Galaxy, with wizards and dragons instead of blasters and spaceships. Even if it looks like an generic fantasy flick they slapped the D&D brand name on I'll still likely buy a ticket, just to send a message with my wallet (not that that worked when I saw Serenity four times in theaters, mind you :().

Not quite. Pathfinder may be descended from D&D, but there is a crucial difference - the money from sales of D&D go to WotC, the money from sales of Pathfinder go to Paizo. From a business perspective it doesn't matter that the new #1 was related to D&D in any way, it only matters that someone else is now getting the larger slice of the revenue pie, and that someone else came about directly as a result of the OGL.

True, but with D&D and Pathfinder sales both being minor compared to M:TG, and altogether negligible on the Hasbro scale, they're likely ignoring that crucial difference as it regards their plans for the D&D brand.

They don't care about 5E books sales, they care about self-identified D&D fans in aggregate, and most Pathfinder folks do consider themselves D&D players. Are Paizo fans really going to mass boycott a D&D movie or video game because it'll benefit WotC?* Maybe on internet forums but in the real world I doubt it!

*Course they might boycott it because Sweetpea made it and it looks like $#!^, but that's just good sense...
 

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