WotC New D&D survey from WotC as part of the 50th anniversary year.

Yaarel said:

The loss of Mearls, a major designer for 5e, is concerning.

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That may be concerning inasmuch as he is an excellent game designer, so firing him may indicate WotC doesn't value excellent game designers as much as it should. But he hasn't been working on D&D at all for years now—he was moved to a non-public-facing role on the Magic side of the company, apparently as a result of the "Fire Mike Mearls" noise in the D&D social mediasphere. Now that he's a free agent, he is working on D&D again as a third-party designer and is running a very interesting Patreon.

So my take is, if he can continue to make a go of it as a free-agent designer, that's a net gain for D&D fans.

Ruin Explorer said:

I think the bigger issue it illustrates is a general lack of coherency of thinking, foresight and real care for WotC's reputation and brands in WotC's corporate layers (rather than say, within the D&D or MtG teams). WotC are B2C not B2B and I feel like they sometimes forget that. Or forget that the C (customers) exist at all or even have volition (again talking WotC corporate, not the actual D&D team - but the former overrule the latter). It's that lack of real consideration of their own brand that has lead to it being so damaged that, really at best people are putting "neutral" on WotC, despite having two extremely widely enjoyed and successful game lines (D&D and MtG).

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Well, yup, I agree with all this, that's whybI put them on neutral. I don't think the Pinkerton situation was great, but honestly I see how it happened easily enough, because it was very humdrum everyday corporate activity. It is just very annoying as a "Remember the Alamo!" nerd rallying cry, because they sent an agent to ask a dude who had procured illicit goods to trade them for goods of the equivalent value, nobody was hurt or going to be hurt, unlike the OGL changes or layoffs. The dude himself had so, so many off-ramps before they got to that point.

Angry about the OGL? Layoffs? Product dissatisfaction? Those I have sympathy with. Those were very bad. "WotC hired the Pinkertons!" is just...not sympathetic to me.

mamba said:

I agree, they guy did not sound intimidated by their visit in the least however, he even said he wasn’t I believe, his wife however dis feel that way. I don’t think they did more than tell him what the consequences of not cooperating would be

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Both his wife and multiple neighbours felt threatened and upset by the behaviour of the Hired Goons.

The Hired Goons also painted a rather fanciful picture of the consequences of not cooperating, which to a certain extent is to be expected, but is also fundamentally not honest or forthright (not that the guy was, he was somewhat cagey about how he got the products, though apparently everyone agrees it wasn't criminality, but he's an individual, not the representative of a corporation). However, he said that they behaved "cordially" when the spoke to him. It was only after he spoke to his wife and neighbours that he found they'd been behaving less appropriately (including apparent trespassing - they also lied that they had an appointment).

mamba said:

if he had been pretty amenable the visit would not have been necessary and he would have cooperated when WotC contacted him. To me that is entirely on him

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No.

That's not what amenable means. The issue appears to be that WotC didn't even succeed in contacting him prior to this, not that he was difficult or unpleasant with them. Unfortunately, we only have his account. All WotC said was they didn't "instruct" the Hired Goons to be "intimidating or threatening" (which is very different from saying they weren't), and generically said that they "strongly refute" his account of events, but did not specify what part of his account, or in what way it was supposed to be wrong. Let's be real here, no specifics means they aren't actually refuting anything, they're just a defensive corporate statement in case they end up in court, and don't appear to have tacitly agreed to his version of events. If people actually refute something, they give their own account - but WotC didn't do that at all (AFAICT). You see this over and over in the news - "[politician/actor/CEO] strongly refutes [person's] statement that [crime/corruption/sex scandal] happened" - but when they don't give their own version, it's funny how often it emerges that the "strongly refuted" account was in fact, basically true.

mamba said:

If they have no more screwups, then that might get them back out of it.

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Yeah good luck with that. Whilst they may handle the 5E 2024 SRD gracefully (or not, we shall see), they seem to be feet-dragging on the previous-edition SRDs, and the 3D VTT is likely to be a disaster on multiple levels. Even if it succeeds, if it's set up as MTX-heavy and ultra-monetized as WotC's own announcement video for it suggested, it's going be pretty bad PR.

Trying not to derail the thread but the Pinkerton thing is greatly misrepresented by many.

There are many divisions with Pinkertons. One is security - and that seems to be the guys people think were involved with this. Another is private investigators, and that is the actual department involved with this.

Security are the big tough intimidating scary guys.

Investigators are practically gamers themselves. They are mostly researchers.

Two investigators were sent into the field on this matter to talk to a guy who, as it turns out, accidentally received the wrong product that had not been released yet thinking something nefarious had happened.

Once the matter was clearly up, WOTC apologized to the guy and sent him a bunch of free stuff to make up for the misunderstanding.

In most of the world, this is not some major "they're evil!!!!!!" event. However because this is being viewed by fantasy roleplayers, somehow the extremely old (like 75 years plus) old reputation as all Pinkertons being union busting gun toting thugs was conflated with this event, like it's some movie.

This wasn't that. It's certainly something people can object to, I think it's fair to say WOTC should have checked their facts better, and Pinkertons were going in kinda blind on the real details. But it was not two huge thugs aiming guns at some guy to threaten him if he didn't do as they demanded. That's guys fantasizing about long ago movie stuff about the Pinkertons, not the reality of the type of guys who are investigators for them today.

But there is no convincing people otherwise. They want that image of the big bad Pinkertons busting in doors and there is no persuading them otherwise. Even after the guy who had it happen to him himself is pretty fine with it these days.

Ruin Explorer said:

The issue appears to be that WotC didn't even succeed in contacting him prior to this

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If someone doesn't answer their phone to you, then you haven't succeeded in contacting them. If it's important, then the next step has to be sending someone to their address in person.

Parmandur said:

I don't think the Pinkerton situation was great, but honestly I see how it happened easily enough, because it was very humdrum everyday corporate activity.

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To be honest, I kind of do as well, but in my view it's outright negligent for a company to work with the Pinkertons at all without carefully managing what they actually use them for. WotC has used them before, basically for intimidating low-level employees (i.e. factory workers etc.), which is the main reason you hire them - to put the fear of god into your actual honest working joes (thanks capitalism!). You usually do this if you're a B2B corporation who thinks it has a theft issue (and maybe would like to prevent any unions from appearing) or when the Pinkertons are only ever going to interact with your workforce and nothing else.

Here I suspect the chain of events was "WotC hires/has on retainer Pinkertons to investigate thefts from their MtG plants". Thus the Pinkertons investigated this, but both WotC and them should have gone "Uh-oh, time for a rethink" when the investigation involved a "civilian" as it were, especially as it was apparently realized it was not any kind of criminal act on his part before they approached him.

Parmandur said:

It is just very annoying as a "Remember the Alamo!" nerd rallying cry, because they sent an agent to ask a dude who had procured illicit goods to trade them for goods of the equivalent value, nobody was hurt or going to be hurt, unlike the OGL changes or layoffs. The dude himself had so, so many off-ramps before they got to that point.

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I think your cynicism is preventing you from seeing how genuinely and honestly appalled people are, and also you're seemingly only looking at what did happen, not what could have happened. The agents in question appear to have been armed, and in the only account we have (because, again, WotC hasn't given any account of their own, only disavowed any threats/intimidation as not ordered by them and generically and entirely meaninglessly said they "refute" the account of events), they were wandering around on to various people's properties, lying to those people that they had an "appointment" with this guy (which I 100% believe, as it is 100% in line with the behaviour your typical investigator-type rentacop, like a PI without the subtlety). I couldn't easily find out what state this was, but if it was a stand your ground state, we're honestly lucky there wasn't some kind of shoot-out (more likely between these guys and a neighbour than the man himself). Just stupid behaviour.

I'm not so much worried for some dodgy YouTuber (though as a long-married guy the idea of Hired Goons so much as looking at my wife, let alone talking to her and making claims does fill me with a kind of righteous fury whether I like it or not), but what does say to me is "WotC are incompetent" and "WotC are getting into so much PR trouble because they have an executive culture which doesn't give a sod about PR and/or one of impunity for stupid decisions" - and like guess which other company has that? Yeah it's Microsoft, the one I think an actual majority of WotC senior execs at this point used to work at. Mike Mearls much earlier screw-up was also representative of a company where leadership feels it has impunity rather than responsibility.

So I expect more screw-ups on this basis, not fewer, especially when WotC is trying to be dismissive and flippant about this stuff rather than owning it. They aren't always - they were dismissive and flippant about the OGL 2.0 exactly until the problem got so bad they had to do a full 180 and becoming grovelling and glad-handed (to the point of CCBY-ing the SRD, which no-one expected!). The D&D team has also not been dismissive or flippant about racism stuff in their books - they've largely sensibly stayed silent until they worked out what was going on and then were appropriately apologetic.

Paul Farquhar said:

If someone doesn't answer their phone to you, then you haven't succeeded in contacting them. If it's important, then the next step has to be sending someone to their address in person.

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Sure.

But if your next step is "multiple hired goons with guns" rather than "a single polite corporate guy with a letter he can drop if you're not there", you missed a step - maybe quite a few steps - you'd normally also send a process server with a legal threat before "armed hired goons". I suspect this was probably the goons exceeding their authority, but that's still 100% on WotC for hiring them and failing to monitor them appropriately.

Ruin Explorer said:

Sure.

But if your next step is "multiple hired goons with guns" rather than "a single polite corporate guy with a letter he can drop if you're not there", you missed a step - maybe quite a few steps.

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So you don't happen to have a polite corporate guy in the area. I gather America is a pretty big place, and plane fares are expensive. Then you pick up the phone and hire someone who does have people in the area to go round on your behalf. And who do you hire if you are a multinational corp? The people with the biggest brand name in the business (and assume they are capable of handling your problem with politeness and diplomacy).

Also, this is America, "with guns" applies to everyone. From the Pinkertons' PoV, they didn't know they weren't being sent round to visit a nut job who would come out shooting. So you take back up. You do surveillance. Just to make sure it's safe to ring the doorbell.

Paul Farquhar said:

So you don't happen to have a polite corporate guy in the area. I gather America is a pretty big place, and plane fares are expensive.

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Sorry, no, you're into the realms of absolute nonsense. Domestic plane fares in the US are not expensive, and they're certainly a fraction of the rate of multiple hired goons.

Paul Farquhar said:

The people with the biggest brand name in the business (and assume they are capable of handling your problem with politeness and diplomacy).

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So definitely not the Pinkertons, who are nowhere near the biggest brand in the business - indeed are a peculiar sub-brand of Securitas that's primarily focused on a couple of things, and who are known for not handling things with politeness and diplomacy, but rather for alarming people - don't make me go get the articles again.

Making terrible excuses for sending armed hired goons is not going to magically change people's minds on this.

The most charitable-to-WotC interpretation here is that the hired goons in question never told WotC what exactly they were doing, and this was merely an extension of a more routinely internal theft investigation. But it's still on WotC for hiring them. You are always responsible for your hired goons.

Ruin Explorer said:

So definitely not the Pinkertons, who are nowhere near the biggest brand in the business

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Only one I've heard of. I have no reason to suppose the geeky WotC kid who had been tasked to deal with this would know any more than I do.

Ruin Explorer said:

Making terrible excuses for sending armed hired goons is not going to magically change people's minds on this.

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No excuses, terrible or otherwise, will change anyone's minds. People don't like having their minds changed, and will resist it with everything in their power.

Would you feel better if the geeky kid had taken the plane, gone himself, and then been shot dead by a raving nutter?

Ruin Explorer said:

I think your cynicism is preventing you from seeing how genuinely and honestly appalled people are

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I feel my cynicism helps a great deal, since being cynical about WotC for twenty years has never steered me wrong (it'snot like WotC and Hasbro staryed being standard issue Corpotations last year, or even this century). I get why people are anemic about WotC, but this specific incident just isn't worth bringing up constantly.

Ruin Explorer said:

also you're seemingly only looking at what did happen, not what could have happened.

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On that front, they could have skipped straight to legal action.