D&D 5E Hypothetical: WotC goes under and Hasbro vaults D&D. Now What?

[Stormonu]

Yeah, if WotC/Hasbro pockets D&D, the genie's out of the bottle. It's either play with what you got, buy old material off e-bay or see other companies take up the slack with OGL/CC versions of D&D adjacent clones and/or supplements.

Pathfinder, A5E, ToV, Shadowdark and all the others will fill in the gap. The market may shrink, but until everyone whose ever touched the game is gone it will still be around in some form.

 

[mamba]

So this thread is meant to be a discussion about what that might look like. What if by some series of unfortunate events D&D is no longer published or even licensed out? Let's even presume that Hasbro gets real litigious about any trademark violations, but doesn't bother doing anything about people using either SRD under CC.

Now what? What does "D&D never dying" look like under this scenario?

we already have Level Up and Tales of the Valiant, so those two would benefit from this. If neither one is close enough for you, then there are all kinds of subclasses and additional classes for the actual D&D 5e out there already. One of those publishers might just create their own PHB instead of selling their (sub)classes individually. No one can copy the non-SRD WotC subclasses however, esp. with a litigious Hasbro

 

[CleverNickName]

As others have insinuated, I doubt I would even notice.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be a big deal; my friends and I just don't pay that close of attention. We don't subscribe to their newsletters, we don't follow them on social media, we don't use D&D Beyond, we don't browse the Wizards website for new releases--heck, we didn't even switch to the 2024 revised rules. So if what you describe does indeed come to pass and WotC goes under, I'd probably read about it on EN World, make a "huh...weird" noise as I close the browser, and then promptly forget all about it by the time my regular Friday night D&D game rolls around. (shrug)

 

[mamba]

Which ones would rise to the top? Would it be a D&D like or something farther afield? What happens to all the influencers?

none, there would not be a dominant game, which also means the influencer market dries up

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This thread is about exploring what might happen.

Since so much is now out there in Creative Commons, this would be a hiccup, but not the end. The big players who already have 5E-but-not-D&D games will be in the best situation to scoop people up with ToV, A5E, whatever the Goodman Games version is called.

I think there would also be a pile of people who don't want the points of differentiation that Kobold Press, EN Publishing and Goodman put in (in other words, the exact opposite complaint of the people who currently say those games aren't different enough), so I would expect we'd get a CC-based 5E retroclone that would also do well.

There's already a very healthy third party ecosystem that WotC has been aggressively introducing the nothing-but-official folks to via D&D Beyond, so the flow of adventures, supplements, settings, etc., should continue unabated, with some third party folks going all-in now that WotC isn't producing their own stuff.

 

[Zardnaar]

This thread is about exploring what might happen.

I meant I don't care about WotC doing that. They can't ninja my old books away.

Market shrinking would be likely. That could make recruiting players harder.
With clones, OSR, back catalog being available it wouldn't fo anything to me.

Pathfinder effect. I don't need wotc for D&D. One can still play TSR as well.

So unless your scenario is all the clones disappear as well, complete collapse of the eco system I don't care.

D&D could completely tank and die taking WotC, Hasbro and MtG with it and it wouldn't bother me to much.

Lack of players might long term. I'm good for that short term. Smaller group of say 4 vs 3 groups might be one outcome.

 

[sevenbastard]

We pool our money, find a tavern, and hire a band of well armed drifters who just wandered into town to break into the vault and get D&D back for us.

 

[Stormonu]

Which ones would rise to the top? Would it be a D&D like or something farther afield? What happens to all the influencers?

I think Piazo is position that they would initially take the lead, likely with Kobold Press in 2nd place.

I don't follow any influencers so that's harder to see with my crystal ball. I imagine though that the big ones (Critical Role?) would see a noticeable drop, but would continue since they're more about story than tying themselves to one particular RPG brand. Those who exclusively cover D&D would probably move on to their next favorite RPG, though I imagine a lot wouldn't have the numbers to sustain themselves anymore and would have to find something else to cover or simply do.

The biggest thing would probably be we might no longer see the thousands of entries for dice sets on Amazon and Etsy. It might drop to less than a hundred sellers or so, and most of 'em going back to just selling d6's.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think Piazo is position that they would initially take the lead, likely with Kobold Press in 2nd place.

Paizo and Green Ronin were the big dogs in the 3E and 4E era, but at this point, they've gone their own way.

The people who want 5E will find 5E-but-not-D&D published by another company. We saw a bunch of people who purchased Pathfinder and Dungeon Crawl Classics during the OGL fiasco, but it doesn't appear that D&D overall has permanently lost a significant number of players in the long run.

I'm sure some people who want continuous first party support would go to Pathfinder 2E or DCC, but those games both offer different experiences than core 5E, so I don't think that Paizo would be likely to pick up most of the 5E market, unless something else dramatic happens between now and then.

 

[Scribe]

Paizo and Green Ronin were the big dogs in the 3E and 4E era, but at this point, they've gone their own way.

Yeah, interestingly to me, I didn't even think about Pathfinder initially. It's it's own thing, and that's more than fine, but I don't think "I play 5e" exclusive players are interested.