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Yeah, that's along the lines I was thinking: With different Dark Lords bringing their own characteristic landmarks, encounters, and lingering curses to the regions they invade. I just think that's a little too much like the Rage of Demons scenario where the demon princes were spreading forms of...

Yeah, I suspect that they'll use Ravenloft not unlike how they did in 4e when they put it in the Shadowfell. They'll likely create an event that causes the PC's to be pulled by the mists to a specific location and engage at least one of the iconic dark lords. I guess they could instead have an...

Wow, so this conversation went about 47 pages and eventually managed to come to some sort of reasonable understanding. Well done! I kinda feel like we should retire this thread now before something goes wrong.

So the important thing to remember is that TSR was the firm that licensed out the TV rights to Marvel Productions, video game rights to Atari, and movie rights to Sweat Pea. For all my criticism of WotC, they had zip to do with that beyond their decision to acquire TSR in that state. The...

You're not wrong about that, but that "something" almost always springs up from an existing coherent product. You may not see the point of Hasbro "forcing" you to play in the Realms but what they need right now is a consistent setting and some compelling characters and stories that people will...

Sorry, I don't mean that to be taken as a fact. That's why I use the word probably. I just have some experience with wrangling budgets. When one department's funding shrinks and another's grows what often happens is a bunch of non-redundant managers get shuffled into new job descriptions under...

Because the D&D team kinda sucks at marketing? Heck, a couple of their brand managers probably have that job title simply because of seniority and a desire to shrink the amount of payroll allocated to game design. But just because WotC is only funding 2-3 books set in the Forgotten Realms each...

This isn't just about "off chances" of later profit. This is about brand management. Hasbro wants D&D to work like all the other popular IP now, and the only way that's going to happen is if it's accessible and digestible. Supporting multiple settings is a clear path to brand dilution. It makes...

I'm trying to give Hasbro the benefit of the doubt on competently managing a brand. The thing is, it's just as plausible they'll go your route. The difference though is that won't likely be a success either. See their recent disaster with reinventing Jem and the Holograms with barely a nod to...

Actually, while the profit of a D&D movie will not be seen purely as WotC income, the plurality of the D&D team now are brand managers. So while it may not be counted as direct D&D sales, the money that Hasbro makes from D&D movies, t-shirts, and video games really is the metric they count and...

Yeah, they barely netted an increase in players after their sale. That's genuinely pretty sad. :(

You pretty much understand then. The classic RPG business model is that the supplements create continued interest and shelf-presence in your game, but the core books are where you make the most profit. So the supplemental materials are essentially used to help drive demand for the main product...

That's not contradictory from what I'm talking about. I think it's certain that the designers on the team want to keep making the best D&D RPG they can, and not just because it's their job. To keep doing that though they have to reinforce the notion that their work is creating value for Hasbro...

Absolutely. And the thing about WotC is that they're not completely autonomous from Hasbro. Hasbro is the corporation that has to maximize profits within their mission statement, but the way that a division of a publicly traded corporation does that is very different from a solitary firm. A...

Given that revenue is up I think it's pretty safe to assume that profit is up too. If D&D's revenue is up then the only way for it to be making less profit is if it's spending more per book. Given their skeleton crew vs. 4e's bloated roster, it's certainly unlikely they spent more on payroll for...

Don't get me wrong, While I'm not a fan of SCL yet, I do think of myself as a fan of both table-top RPG's and CRPG's. I don't think it's wrong to assume there's some overlap, but the problem is if you're looking to poll people who played the game, it would make more sense to present the poll to...

I find it interesting that this thread has gone 6 pages based pretty much only on Ranger. Or course, it's not surprising, because that's the only part of this update that's really relevant to the people here. Doesn't it seem weird they're polling SCL players on the dnd.wizards.com website...

One of the frequent problems with multiplayer computer games is participant critical mass. Simply put, multiplayer games need a certain number of players present at any given time in order to reliably deliver their game experience. Of course, it varies significantly based on the style of...

I saw on an update that this is indeed a common problem. They released a hot-fix patch shortly after the first patch, but it sounds like it's still an issue for many players.

Pretty much my sentiments exactly, Quickleaf. Unfortunately that means they aren't going to have our financial support to finish the game, which they may need to get that far. Then again, I prefer to pay for actualized content, not the promise of future features. It would suck to pay them $40...