D&D 5E A viable game and the vicious edition cycle

[billd91]

Given the history of TSR, I'd much, MUCH rather have corporate suits in charge of D&D than a "Labour of love" crowd every day of the week. Had TSR actually had some decent business sense back in the day, things would have been much, much different.

As others have pointed out, the suits weren't very good at running things for TSR either, probably because they didn't really know or care anything about the industry. Nor do I think the suits did a very good job with WotC during the 4e era. By comparison, the labor of love people took WotC from a startup to a company with a huge success (Magic) capable of white knighting TSR and rescuing D&D from being tied up in bankruptcy litigation. That's no small feat.

What you need is a judicious mixture of both. Clearly, at Paizo, they're motivated by a love of the game, but tempered by an experienced and savvy CEO who knows what she's doing. And that's why they've been as successful as they have been.

When an RPG company has a production rate similar to TSR in the 2e days, I'd say bloat is a pretty easy thing to point to. Pretty hard to avoid.

Actually pretty easy to avoid. How much bloat affects your game? That's dependent on what you let in, or what my players and I choose to let into our game.

 

[Hussar]

Unfortunately, it's not so clear cut as that. It's not as though Gygax was a masterful businessman, but TSR didn't collapse until after a decade of being run by business outsiders.

And most of the terrible decisions we're mocking them for (Dragon Dice, Spellfire, Blood War, the movie rights, the setting explosion, the huge backstock, and not recognizing these problems) were made after Gygax left.

It wasn't a "labor of love" decision to try and jump on the CCG bandwagon. It was a mistake, sure, but not one driven out of love for the hobby.

At the end of the day, managers are just people. Whether they're motivated by love for the game or profit for the shareholders, they're going to make some stupid decisions.

I can't speak for everyone, but it was pretty easy for us to avoid "bloat." We just ignored the brown books and never had any problems.

We were too busy spending our allowances on setting books anyway

Cheers!
Kinak

Oh, sorry, didn't mean just Gygax. I'd hardly call Lorainne Williams an astute business person. True, not a gamer either, but, hardly the sharpest pencil in the box. Had TSR ever had any competent people at the helm, the history of the hobby would be very different.

 

[Kinak]

Oh, sorry, didn't mean just Gygax. I'd hardly call Lorainne Williams an astute business person. True, not a gamer either, but, hardly the sharpest pencil in the box. Had TSR ever had any competent people at the helm, the history of the hobby would be very different.

Yeah, TSR would definitely have ended up a different place if it had been helmed by a steadier hand.

I was just trying to say you don't automatically get a steady hand with corporate leadership. A lot of dreamers are terrible at business, true, but even S&P 500 companies that can afford big time managers still only have a 15 year lifespan on average. And obviously, those are companies that have already proven they can be fairly successful.

It's not actually too hard for one guy plugging away in his basement to outlast a generation of major companies.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[GX.Sigma]

Actually pretty easy to avoid. How much bloat affects your game? That's dependent on what you let in, or what my players and I choose to let into our game.

I think Hussar meant that it's pretty hard for the company to avoid accusations of bloat.

 

[billd91]

I think Hussar meant that it's pretty hard for the company to avoid accusations of bloat.

That's not how I read his statement. I would agree that it's impossible to avoid accusations of bloat. As soon as someone finds the game has a bunch of options he doesn't want, someone will complain of bloat. That doesn't mean, however, that everyone agrees or that there's some kind of objective bloatometer that will give a reading in bloatinos, centibloatinos, or kilobloatinos.

 

[Werebat]

Actually pretty easy to avoid. How much bloat affects your game? That's dependent on what you let in, or what my players and I choose to let into our game.

This is a problematic attitude. A DM/GM can't know everything about how everything will affect his game when he greenlights it. IDK how your table operates, but at mine the momentum is very hard to stop once it becomes evident that a particular build is trouble -- ESPECIALLY with a non-caster, as their builds tend to be inherently dependent on this stacking with that combined with the other thing. Pull out one brick and the entire structure tumbles. Thus there is intense pressure on the DM/GM to either ban everything non-core (which leads to unhappy players), shift gears mid-campaign (which leads to unhappy players), or suck it up and deal with the cheese that got slipped in until the campaign is over (at which point he'll cook up some mitigating houserules that might or might not work, but it doesn't matter because no one will try that combo again).

So maybe I'm really talking about power creep, but "bloat" in the sense that the more rules and options exist, the less likely it will be for a DM/GM to be able to make an informed decision about them.

Either way, it's a PITA, and makes me want to run a new game with a new edition that isn't yet chock-a-block full of abusable crap.

Anyone who responds to this with "Wizard's core" loses.

 

[MJS]

I disagree with those saying Gary was not good at business. You would not be posting on this forum were that the case.
My sense, and I have read every forum post of his, is that he was too trusting, but an excellent strategist and businessman, especially where D&D was concerned. When he returned to TSR HQ, he immediatwly set things right and saved the company he started, ending gross expenditures, and publishing the UA.


Anyway, I think it comes down to quality. When I look at 2E, this was a brilliant flourishing of AD&D, and not just for settings. Many of the early "splat" books were good, quality, modular additions to the game.


But then the quality nosedived. I remember buying another splat book, and being disgusted by the number of typos, as well as uninspired by the material. That's when I stopped buying TSR books - when the material started sucking, and they literally could not even be bothered to proofread their suckage.

 

[Zardnaar]

I disagree with those saying Gary was not good at business. You would not be posting on this forum were that the case.
My sense, and I have read every forum post of his, is that he was too trusting, but an excellent strategist and businessman, especially where D&D was concerned. When he returned to TSR HQ, he immediatwly set things right and saved the company he started, ending gross expenditures, and publishing the UA.


Anyway, I think it comes down to quality. When I look at 2E, this was a brilliant flourishing of AD&D, and not just for settings. Many of the early "splat" books were good, quality, modular additions to the game.


But then the quality nosedived. I remember buying another splat book, and being disgusted by the number of typos, as well as uninspired by the material. That's when I stopped buying TSR books - when the material started sucking, and they literally could not even be bothered to proofread their suckage.

Gary was not the one in charge when the feces hit the fan so to speak. He probably was not a brilliant business man but he seemed to know the basics unlike the Blumes. He did save D&D in early 85 which annoyed the Blumes and they sold to Lorraine Williams.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

In many businesses, things start to go downhill (for both customers and employees) once stock is offered to people other than the founders and initial investors. When you get boards, power struggles, and an ridiculously high emphasis on single quarter results, everything changes.

TSR made a lot of mistakes all along the line, both before and after Gygax's departure.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

it was all the ancillary products that helped bring TSR down (y'know, the kinda stuff Mearls is talking about being the bright future of the franchise - no cause for pessimism, though, it's almost 20 years later and things are different, now).

Yeah, I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to achieve the level of success they want with that.