WotC WotC can, and probably should support multiple editions of D&D.

[Lanefan]

Don't suppose that'll push you to run a free game there? Be the change you want to see???

The world deserves more Lanfan games!

It can have 'em, too - but you won't see them on roll20 as I'll only DM in person at a real table.

And the only cost there is what you choose to spend, if anything, on snacks-books-supplies-etc.

 

[mamba]

I don't think 5E has nearly the volume of print copy 1E had

not so sure about that, you can maybe fit the entire 1e print run into the 5e core book run. It takes a while to get to the about 4.5M books the PHB is ahead alone, the other two core books are mostly buffer

 

[bmfrosty]

One of the big reasons TSR went bankrupt when it owned D&D was that it made lots of different campaign settings, with adventures in each of them, and it split the player base. Profit per book is way down - costs for design, editing, art, layout, and the stuff is the same, cost per copy is up with smaller print runs, and they sell less books.

So, everything else you say needs to address the financial aspects to have any foundation.


Alienating some existing players, and reselling core books to all the other players, still makes financial sense.


So, higher development costs, additional printing costs for the additional pages, just to sell to the same total number of players. Failure. Plus that means that for some of them they haven't sold the new core books - additional failure.


What is their motivation to all of this?


Sorry, looking at all of this, I can't see anything that makes sense for WotC to follow this as a business plan.

Not meant to be a business plan. Meant to start a discussion. I discussed motivations for the post here - WotC - WotC can, and probably should support multiple editions of D&D.

 

[Blue]

Not meant to be a business plan. Meant to start a discussion. I discussed motivations for the post here - WotC - WotC can, and probably should support multiple editions of D&D.

"Probably should" requires a business plan. Heck, "can" requires a business plan because they are publicly traded and have a bunch of activist stockholders as we saw last year.

Sorry, your motivations aren't the relevant thing when you are claiming a business can do something, and should do something.

 

[Moonmover]

But more importantly, D&D has tried having multiple competing product lines before and it emphatically didn't work. The whole reason TSR went bankrupt is that they had all these competing D&D products that were by and large mutually exclusive--both D&D and AD&D, not to mention TSR's other non-D&D games and multiple mutually incompatible AD&D settings.

This is not completely relevant to the topic at hand, but -

The various AD&D 2e settings are not as incompatible as they appear at first glance. Smashing them together can make for a good time.

 

[Blue]

This is not completely relevant to the topic at hand, but -

The various AD&D 2e settings are not as incompatible as they appear at first glance. Smashing them together can make for a good time.

To quote you: "This is not completely relevant to the topic at hand"

The proliferation of settings they had and the splitting of the fan base for adventures and supplements based in one setting or another is a documented part of the financial troubles that TSR had. Your beliefs about if they are fun smashed together has no bearing whatsoever on historic events that have happened. Multiple settings caused financial woes, regardless if that historic fact does not fit your personal narrative that they could be fun together.

 

[Chaltab]

This is not completely relevant to the topic at hand, but -

The various AD&D 2e settings are not as incompatible as they appear at first glance. Smashing them together can make for a good time.

I mean incompatible, no. Mutually exclusive, kind of.

Like, if you're doing a Spelljammer game then Dark Sun might be fun to mine for some ideas, a planet to visit. But the space exploration of Spelljammer is incompatible with the main themes of Dark Sun wherein Athas is all you've got and you have to fight to save it or carve out a place for yourself. If you're doing a Birthright game where you're a king running a realm, then you'd abruptly switch to another genre if the mists drag you into a domain of Ravenloft. They're all mechanically AD&D but thematially they're completely different.

 

[Hex08]

Your beliefs about if they are fun smashed together has no bearing whatsoever on historic events that have happened.

No, but they do have a bearing on what @Moonmover thinks about the various settings. Maybe I shouldn't speak for someone else but I didn't read anything in the post you replied to about the history of TSR or their financial troubles, all I saw was a player's opinion on how much fun it was mashing settings together. His opinion may or may not apply to others but there was certainly nothing wrong about the post.

 

[Hex08]

"Probably should" requires a business plan. Heck, "can" requires a business plan because they are publicly traded and have a bunch of activist stockholders as we saw last year.

Sorry, your motivations aren't the relevant thing when you are claiming a business can do something, and should do something.

"Probably should" and "can" only require a business plan if you are starting a business. It doesn't ever seem that @bmfrosty was trying to start a business based on the original post.

 

[Parmandur]

Yea. With the OGL and now CcBy they have defacto licensed out D&D. For 5e and older editions.

Not for the specific lore or stuff not covered, but then again I think most folks make their own anyway.

I don't expect WotC to produce material for older Editions, but they sure seem to be putting a lot of energy into making the VTT rules neutral, which combined with selling older material in PDFs would be a pretty good way to facilitate older editions. More CC would be nice, too.