D&D General “Folk” D&D vs. “Official” D&D

[Art Waring]

I guess i would be folk then, seeing as I have been using the OGL since its inception and not much else.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Nice quote from Gygax
- Change the bloody rules to suit yourself and the players

You can't.

5e doesn't have a bloodied rule.

 

[CleverNickName]

You can't.

5e doesn't have a bloodied rule.

Oh?

(scribbles down some notes)

Well it does now!

 

[Oofta]

Corporations are bad because they want to make a profit vibe. Buy these t-shirts from my sponsor!

The word "irony" pops to mind.

 

[Stormonu]

Hasbro/WotC has forgotten the old adage "How do you make a million dollars with D&D?" answer: "Start with ten million dollars".

To me, "monetization" always seems to end with running the product into the ground. I don't need Hasbro/Wotc, but if they offer me something I like, I'm not going to turn it down. I do however, find myself purchasing less "official" product lately. I already have such a huge library, I don't really need more - books, mugs, blankets, t-shirts or whatever. They may need the money for their company to survive, I don't necessarily need them to exist to keep gaming with what I have.

 

[Umbran]

Hasbro/WotC has forgotten the old adage "How do you make a million dollars with D&D?" answer: "Start with ten million dollars".

Well, the old rules didn't work for them, so they changed them!

They may need the money for their company to survive,

Nobody has said that they need it for the company to survive. They had a less-than-stellar year, but Hasbro isn't going bankrupt.

It isn't like they are a not-for-profit company, or something. They exist to make money. The brand gives them an opportunity - you expect them to just take a pass on it?

 

[Mind of tempest]

I think he misses the fact that healthy communities have what is analogous to an ecology.

There is interplay between the smaller, more numerous entities and the larger, "apex" entities that helps keep the ecology more or less stable and thriving, even while individual entities within the ecology come and go.

can you expand on this point as I think it sounds genius?

Corporations are bad because they want to make a profit vibe. Buy these t-shirts from my sponsor!

The word "irony" pops to mind.

it is the grim necessity of how youtube funding works.

also you get too profit-focused for your own good which is really easy to see these days.

 

[Krachek]

You can't.

5e doesn't have a bloodied rule.

Rules are not raw meat?

 

[Umbran]

can you expand on this point as I think it sounds genius?

Sure. Let me start with a biological example to demonstrate the idea. For this, I choose... American Bison.

We view the American prairie as "grasslands", and normally, they are - dominated by (iirc) four species of grass. Where bison graze, however, we find the diversity of plant matter increases, to include other grass species, goldenrod, and other other flora. The more diverse prairie flora is, among other things, more resistant to drought than areas of lower diversity, and has greater diversity of other animals, who feed on things other than the dominant grasses.

Bison also churn the soil when they come marching through en masse. This helps create watering holes and mud wallows that other species use.

Remove the apex bison, you have a less diverse prarie. This would seem paradoxical - having a major dominant species present would sound like it should lower diversity. But what happens is that the bison support niches in the ecosystem that they themselves don't use!

We can then look at how a larger company, like WotC, might support niches in the RPG landscape that they don't themselves fill. Those niches are apt to collapse if there's not a dominant company or two around, meaning that you'd actually end up with less diversity in games if there weren't something like WotC around. Lower diversity means less resilience to changing conditions.

As a very basic example - we should all expect that WotC is the largest force for bringing new people into the hobby, by far. Not all those people play only D&D for the rest of their lives.

While someone's particular home game may not need new people, the hobby as a whole does.

 

[Oofta]

Hasbro/WotC has forgotten the old adage "How do you make a million dollars with D&D?" answer: "Start with ten million dollars".

To me, "monetization" always seems to end with running the product into the ground. I don't need Hasbro/Wotc, but if they offer me something I like, I'm not going to turn it down. I do however, find myself purchasing less "official" product lately. I already have such a huge library, I don't really need more - books, mugs, blankets, t-shirts or whatever. They may need the money for their company to survive, I don't necessarily need them to exist to keep gaming with what I have.

The difference is that the books and rules are just one quarter of the pie. You don’t make a ton of money on TTRPGs even if D&D is unique and does make a decent chunk of change. You can make a lot more money off movies and related merchandise. They have a vested interest in people playing the game. It could even make sense for it to be a loss leader for other aspects of the brand going forward, not that I expect that.

Whether anyone spends anything more on their products in the future will always be a personal choice.