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Okay, then. Let's just agree to disagree.

Practically everyone in the industry keeps saying the physical store and physical shelf is vital and the key to the industry. I don't know, but that's what we keep hearing from everyone. I've heard stores say how critical this is for them in order to keep backing and pushing RPGs. There is...

As others have said, this is widely done. There are now so many organized play programs that good active stores have several events running nearly every day (often for different programs). A store might have Friday Night Magic, Wednesday Adventurers League, Pathfinder Society, Attack Wing...

No, I don't think anyone would say that. But, we don't know by how much Wizards "needs" the market to increase. We do know that Gen Con more than doubled in attendance since 2005, PAX doubled in attendance almost every year... basically until it couldn't grow and now they just add more...

It is probably more than most gamers buy. So, maybe that is the right approach... especially if the real money is licensing to MMOs, MMOs, and the like. I want my D&D TV series! :-)

I won't speculate on the speculations, but on the above, I've been surprised many times by the size of the market in terms of players... as opposed to $. For example, when I played Living Greyhawk it was very clearly the most successful organized play campaign ever, and it felt like it. It felt...

It's a good reminder that it really matters to those in the industry when we thank them. If you were a fan of what these two did, thank them! That favorite book? Find the people who made it and thank them.

That's fantastic, Lisa! Paizo is amazing and great for the hobby! How vital is having your own (online) store front? Do you agree with Ryan that this is a key for you?

We have very few data points. The data points we have, they tell a story of each edition outselling the previous one, in terms of core book sales. The Red Box in 1989 seems the one anomaly. I can say that the Wizards folks I know well with whom I've talked to (employees who have no reason to...

This is completely incorrect. By several accounts (including Ryan Dancey), 4E exceeded 3E in initial launch numbers. 5E has been off-the-charts (or should we say, "on the Amazon charts") in its success - it is unlikely anything other than the first Red Boxed set has done as well, and I would bet...

I'm a contractor/freelancer for my real job, and in most fields this is absolutely true. It isn't in publishing and certainly not in RPGs. The core issue is a lack of money in RPGs, even at the highest corporate level. An average story goes like this: An individual starts an RPG company...

I turned .01 down last week. It was a well-known RPG company, for an adventure at Gen Con. I am fortunate to be able to write as a hobby, not for income, but I felt responsible for others who do need to earn these assignments to help make ends meet. I turned it down, in part, in hopes it would...

Wizards does employ many outside freelancers, and has been increasingly. Look at any recent 5E adventure and you are likely looking at freelancers. Now, there is terrific direction from Wizards as to what should be written (and ideas on how), but even the development and editorial work can be in...

A good number, but it isn't causal. WotC's and TSR's enemy has always been the industry and itself, not other companies. If anything, the track record is that of other companies helping to make D&D much stronger. (As an easy example, what others were doing with D&D pushed TSR to flesh out...

Layoffs happen for many different reasons at WotC. Often it is a corporate move from up high, where (as in many companies) each group has to make a certain percentage of cuts. Then the managers have to decide whether to let one-two expensive persons go or more lower-cost people go. It's always...

I completely understand this, though I have plenty of nostalgia around the old Dark Sun listserv. I managed it for a while, and it was what kept me in gaming when graduate school prevented me from spending time gaming. I met Raddu and other great Dark Sun fans there. Of course, we now have taken...

I agree with Aramis. The storyline adventures are likely for the near-term to begin at level 1 and for the in-store Encounters to work the same way. The reason is that in-store programs are designed to draw in new players more than they are meant to maintain invested players, because invested...

I have updated the main thread now that Wizards and the Adventurers League have announced the upcoming storyline season, Elemental Evil! As with Tyranny of Dragons, Elemental Evil ties together a number of offerings all around a central story. The adventure, Princes of the Apocalypse, is the...

4 out of 5 rating for Shadow on the Moonsea Shadows Over the Moonsea was a lot of fun when I played it at Gen Con 2014. We had a mix of new and established players at the table, and they all had a great time. The adventure had some very fun combats (one was particularly challenging) and some...

4 out of 5 rating for Secrets of Sokol Keep We had a great time playing this at Gen Con. A common sentiment seems to be that it can be confusing, and in some cases it was, but it was still a lot of fun for us. We liked the different elements brought into the adventure which created a compelling...