Why We Should Work With WotC

[darjr]

 

[raniE]

Hasbro will not, under any circumstances, sell D&D or Magic unless Hasbro themselves are bought and dismembered. Hasbro does not sell brands. Period. They will vault it and sell retro-logo T-shirts for eternity before they ever give up either.

We were talking about Hasbro dying. Did you forget the context after just one reply? A dying company has no choice.

D&D, and Magic, are gateways for too many people. The vast majority of non-gaming attuned people think a Pathfinder is a car and Pokemon is a video game. They aren't going to carry the recognition of that either brand's name carries. The RPG market goes back to small pockets of "try this game" word of mouth, rather than something that people pick up out of curiosity or from marketing (and everything from CR to Honor Among Thieves is marketing).

CR can switch to a different game, and they'll be marketing to someone else. Anything can be a gateway. I'm with @Justice and Rule on this one, the cat's already out of the bag (now to be clear about Magic, I don't care if it dies and brings the entire CCG market down with it, because the business model is itself predatory, like loot boxes). Pokemon is a video game and a cartoon. Dungeons & Dragons is a video game, a series of failed movies and an 80s cartoon.

 

[Minigiant]

Okay. Not profitable enough is not the same as not profitable, though, and not profitable is what @Minigiant was claiming. 5e has done both profitable adventures and profitable core books.

I didn't mean "no profitable not profitable" but "corporate not profitable"

2% GP is profitable but a failure in business.

 

[raniE]

WotC benefits a lot from the OGL, but not in a way that shows up in a financial statement. They benefit by having smaller and more agile 3PPs, with lower overheads and lower demands on profit margins, create niche support material that wouldn't be profitable enough for Wizards to make. They benefit by having 3PPs provide D&D-adjacent alternatives for people who want to branch out into non-D&D games – a group who tries out a 5e-based sci-fi game is more likely to keep buying 5e stuff and maybe play 5e for the campaign after that than a group that tries out Star Wars or Infinity. And at least Dancey has suggested that even Pathfinder was a long-term benefit for Wizards, because it kept players disaffected by 4e in D&D's orbit, ready to be picked up by 5e instead of quitting RPGs altogether or moving to entirely different games.

3PPs probably benefit more from the OGL than Wizards does, but Wizards clearly benefits.

I think Wizards has actually been benefiting from the OGL 1.0a way more than any third party producers have. Locking people into the D&D ecosystem is a massive win for Hasbro.

 

[Maxperson]

I think they meant in the corporate sense of "We aren't reaching our targets". That's how I took it with their followup to me.

Fair enough.

To answer your question in the quote up there, Spelljammer did "setting" particularly bad.

 

[robconley]

You gotta know this is not remotely on the table. Like, this pretty much never happens, and it would be unprofessional to force them to do this.

You fire people if you have to, but you never throw them under the bus in the public eye. The apology comes from above that person if possible, from their replacement if necessary, and if you just cannot swing one of those and it has to come from the person themselves you have them write it specifically as a representative of the company, not as an individual. It's "we are sorry, we messed up in this way, here is what we are doing and going to do to make things right."

You do know the two individuals are the CEOs of their respective corporations. They approved of everything that is happening there is no above unless you count the board.

 

[Maxperson]

I didn't mean "no profitable not profitable" but "corporate not profitable"

2% GP is profitable but a failure in business.

That's fair. Do we know how profitable it has been for WotC? 2%, 10%, 15.2826%?

 

[raniE]

You gotta know this is not remotely on the table. Like, this pretty much never happens, and it would be unprofessional to force them to do this.

You fire people if you have to, but you never throw them under the bus in the public eye. The apology comes from above that person if possible, from their replacement if necessary, and if you just cannot swing one of those and it has to come from the person themselves you have them write it specifically as a representative of the company, not as an individual. It's "we are sorry, we messed up in this way, here is what we are doing and going to do to make things right."

Reprimand in private, praise in public, is the standard, and for good reason.



I mean, this is all true regardless of what they do.

First, there is no one above them, except Chris Cocks is above Cynthia Williams. After that, it's just the board. And no, if it was that or the company goes under, the board would do it. And I think that kind of corporate culture is terrible, because it means no one is ever responsible for anything. The consequences for failure at that level should include the public being made aware of what you did. These people shouldn't be trusted to have executive level jobs in the future. If there are no consequences, there's no limit to this kind of psychopathic behavior.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You do know the two individuals are the CEOs of their respective corporations. They approved of everything that is happening there is no above unless you count the board.

Oh, man, if only I had made comments about general practice as well as the specific situation, and included what is generally done if it isn't possible to have someone above the offender nor a replacement make the official apology!

I wait, I did do that.

 

[Minigiant]

I mean, this is the really the reason we need to defend OGL 1.0a. At this point, it might be one of the best ways to actually keep D&D going into the future (if recent revelations about their business plans are accurate).

We don't need the OGL 1.0a to survive, we need big money advertisement to survive. Or TTRPGs will contract a lot and go the way of Turn Based Strategy.

It's already heading to the levels of 4x