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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imruphel" data-source="post: 7168370" data-attributes="member: 15684">I am probably lawful evil in many ways so my expertise at the art of sugar coating directly correlates with the amount of money I have at stake.He was never in charge but he was promoted just before he was retrenched.Chris Perkins referred to him as the best adventure writer working for WotC - which is high praise coming from someone else who is an outstanding adventure writer. Rich was one of the few WotCers who actually grokked 4E and turned out good adventures even in 4E's early days when we otherwise saw nothing but duds. If WotC was serious about reviving 4E, he's the man who would have been put in charge of it.Again, I'm not blaming MM for orchestrating the demise of 4E; he was merely a cat's-paw for those in the executive ranks.  And it's the size of Hasbro - especially relative to the size of the D&D business (roughly USD10 million a year in revenues when 4E died - estimate only, but not conjured out of thin air) - that would allow this sort of internal corporate game to be played out.But, again, as I really don't like having to defend myself from comments I neither made nor implied, this was way above MM's pay grade. I'm sure he did his best but he was simply the wrong man for the job... which made him the right man for the real job he was being instructed to perform. Plus, any failure would be pinned to the departed Bill Slavicsek making this an even easier play to make.What would the net result have been? Something like: "Our research now clearly tells us that the customer base wants us to go backwards rather than forwards. We tried that with our best designer on Essentials but - bloody Slavicsek! - our research now shows that nostalgia simply doesn't fit on the 4E chassis. We need a new edition for the customer base which is clearly begging for it and here are Mike's plans. Yep, he learnt a lot through the Essentials process. We should put him in charge."And, yeah, someone at WotC will read that and wonder if I had bugged his meeting with a Hasbro executive.One final thing: I don't want people thinking I've got it out for Mike Mearls. I'm an anonymous, very irregular poster. He's a big part of the success of 5E. People are going to remember him for 5E, not for his duds during his OGL freelance years or Keep on the Shadowfell, Pyramid of Shadow, Heroes of Shadow, Essentials, and the first 4E Monster Manual.Yes, and a million doesn't matter when you're already seen as a division that has failed. The blame had already been pinned to someone else - Bill S - so it was merely a matter of clearing the decks to start again in a different environment.</blockquote>

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