D&D 5E Hypothetical: WotC goes under and Hasbro vaults D&D. Now What?

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

You can't sell that stuff anywhere else (as a stipulation of the license) and therefore if Hasbro shuts it down, it is gone.

What I was asking was: can WotC shut it down? They don’t own it, but lt since it is their IP I assume so?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Don't care. OSR and clones still around. If they're gone as well I have around 500 books/magazines on the shelf.

Barely touched a lot of 2E and 3E splat. Pathfinder as well only bought 6 books.

If recruiting players is hard/impossible run a smaller group.

Back catalog would last for years. Actually play my 5E stack of adventures as is.

Right there with you. As far as content goes Hasbro/WotC could disappear tomorrow and it wouldn't change anything for me. In some ways the industry would IMO benefit from official D&D and the corporation that owns and markets it being out of the picture.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which ones would rise to the top? Would it be a D&D like or something farther afield? What happens to all the influencers?

It would likely be a D&D like that gets the biggest market share, but still smaller than D&D had (a very good thing IMO), and everyone else would I think be on a more even playing field.

The influencers would move on to other games or fade away. Doesn't matter to me either way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think LU/ToV essentially are D&D as most people (5e players) think of it.
I think Shadowdark would continue to prosper.
I think OSR in its myriad of representations, would continue. Same with the *Borgs.

If ever there was a time when we do not need Wizards, its now.

Agreed. They are far less relevant than they have ever been.

 

[Micah Sweet]

we already have Level Up and Tales of the Valiant, so those two would benefit from this. If neither one is close enough for you, then there are all kinds of subclasses and additional classes for the actual D&D 5e out there already. One of those publishers might just create their own PHB instead of selling their (sub)classes individually. No one can copy the non-SRD WotC subclasses however, esp. with a litigious Hasbro

File the serial numbers off and you'd be fine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That wasn't the question. That DMsGuild stuff, if it is tied to D&D IP is dead.

Hopefully there will be some warning so I can buy up what I want.

What have you heard?

 

[Lanefan]

Personally? No change, keep on keepin' on.

For the greater D&D community? A long slow death spiral similar to the early-mid 1990s until only the hard-core nutballers (like us!) remain, that continues until and unless someone buys the IP and reboots D&D.

As for the "infuencers", no doubt they'd find something else to influence instead.

 

[Autumnal]

Yes, DM’s Guild and its equivalents all exist at the will of the publisher, and would cease to exist if that sanction went away.

For me personally, it’d have no effect on my purchasing and gaming. I used to dream that in the absence of WotC, games I like would enlarge their audience significantly. But that was just ignorant wishing. I can hope for them to grow a bit, but not qualitatively. I’m okay with this.

There are probably formula from voting and economic studies to suggest how many lines would form part of the new top tier. (Like Duvenger’s Law, which shows why first-past-the-post systems will converge on having exactly two dominant parties. Fascinating stuff.) I have no idea what the number might be. Two? Three? Probably not more than that. Then a second tier below that, closer to the top tier than anything is to D&D now. And then below that, about what we have now.

 

[dave2008]

Nothing much would happen to my games. For D&D: I think it would be a bad thing. It would splinter and sink. Without one big market leader casual players would not jump in and the game would slowly wither. Not sure if it would die, but it would end up in a sorry place.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nothing much would happen to my games. For D&D: I think it would be a bad think. It splinter and sink. Without one big market leader casual players would not jump in and the game would slowly wither. Not sure if it would die, but it would end up in a sorry place.

Probably but that's a WotC problem.