D&D 5E MtG D&D Commander Legends: Battle For Baldur's Gate Announce!

[Henadic Theologian]

Do you have an alternative hypothesis? Because I've heard the "they canceled the novels because WotC secretely hates Ed Greenwood!" theory, and let me say that's extremely dubious.

They canceled the novels because someone at WotC up and decided they weren't a novel company so they decided to externalities it by getting another company to do it, but failed specularily. The only reason reason RAS still does Drizzt novels is he worked his ass off trying to make a deal happen with a 3rd party company.

Honestly it's been a disaster both MtG and D&D side, story used to be at the heart of both and externaliting the novels killed that.

 

[Bolares]

Honestly it's been a disaster both MtG and D&D side, story used to be at the heart of both and externaliting the novels killed that.

I've always preferred the online free short stories for MTG.

 

[Aldarc]

Given that Hasbro is a toy company, not a publishing house, that's hardly surprising.

I know that I'm not the only person who has a golden rule when it comes to fantasy literature: never buy any book based on a game franchise.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

They simply didn't care. They didn't want to support the staffing of individuals who would manage this.

It's not as if Wizards was authoring the books, or that the RPG team was needed to support an author.

It's like blaming an art team for software bugs.

They canceled the novels because someone at WotC up and decided they weren't a novel company so they decided to externalities it by getting another company to do it, but failed specularily. The only reason reason RAS still does Drizzt novels is he worked his ass off trying to make a deal happen with a 3rd party company.

Honestly it's been a disaster both MtG and D&D side, story used to be at the heart of both and externaliting the novels killed that.

I half-buy this. As in, I'll buy that they didn't care... if the novels weren't making enough money. If there truly was this huge readership and they were making a ton of money off it, there's no way they would have killed it.

But if the books were doing "just ok," I totally understand WotC cutting it off to double-down on their core business, which is gaming.

Also, I'm pretty sure they stopped MTG novels for a completely different reason; the reception to the War of the Spark novels was so negative they decided to just stop publishing.

 

[Scribe]

I half-buy this. As in, I'll buy that they didn't care... if the novels weren't making enough money. If there truly was this huge readership and they were making a ton of money off it, there's no way they would have killed it.

But if the books were doing "just ok," I totally understand WotC cutting it off to double-down on their core business, which is gaming.

Also, I'm pretty sure they stopped MTG novels for a completely different reason; the reception to the War of the Spark novels was so negative they decided to just stop publishing.

Eh, there was a whole thing on the MTG side that will do nothing but add negativity to ones life, not worth the key strokes.

I can absolutely accept the novels didn't make huge bank, but I don't think they would have been taking a loss in supporting them as an additional way into the hobby.

/shrug

I buy 40K novels though, so what do I know.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I half-buy this. As in, I'll buy that they didn't care... if the novels weren't making enough money. If there truly was this huge readership and they were making a ton of money off it, there's no way they would have killed it.

But if the books were doing "just ok," I totally understand WotC cutting it off to double-down on their core business, which is gaming.

Also, I'm pretty sure they stopped MTG novels for a completely different reason; the reception to the War of the Spark novels was so negative they decided to just stop publishing.

They weren't planning on killing it, they assumed a third party publisher would snap up a licensing deal, they didn't, yet. Companies try and externalities costs all the time like this, it's just this time it blew up in their face this time.

 

[Bolares]

I can absolutely accept the novels didn't make huge bank, but I don't think they would have been taking a loss in supporting them as an additional way into the hobby.

In some corporations not taking a loss isn't reason enough to support something. D&D itself was a minimal team until 5e blew up...

 

[Urriak Uruk]

They weren't planning on killing it, they assumed a third party publisher would snap up a licensing deal, they didn't, yet. Companies try and externalities costs all the time like this, it's just this time it blew up in their face this time.

I'm sorry, "they were hoping a third-party publisher would snap up a licensing deal"? That's not how this works, you don't do business on hope. If WotC wanted someone to publish novels, they would go out and negotiate with a bunch of publishers, and eventually they would come to an agreement with someone.

It's been 5 years. If WotC really wanted someone publishing their novels this bad, it would have happened by now. And they are publishing some books and comics, so it's not like this is some impossible thing. Nothing has "blown up in their face," if WotC was desperate to get novels published, they would. They clearly don't care much about resurrecting the old novel paradigm (and if the novels had been super profitable, they would be).

 

[Scribe]

In some corporations not taking a loss isn't reason enough to support something. D&D itself was a minimal team until 5e blew up...

Yeah, 4e did a lot of damage, I assume the downsizing killed off any novel support staff.

 

[Parmandur]

I half-buy this. As in, I'll buy that they didn't care... if the novels weren't making enough money. If there truly was this huge readership and they were making a ton of money off it, there's no way they would have killed it.

But if the books were doing "just ok," I totally understand WotC cutting it off to double-down on their core business, which is gaming.

Also, I'm pretty sure they stopped MTG novels for a completely different reason; the reception to the War of the Spark novels was so negative they decided to just stop publishing.

Actually, War of the Spark was done by an outside publisher, because WotC stopped doing Magic novels internally about 7 years ago. About the exact same time they phased out D&D fiction, and probably for the same reason: insufficient ROI. Novels are not the market they were in 1999 across the board, let alone for tie-in fiction.