If Hasbro Pulls the Plug....

[Ulrick]

I wouldn't be dancing in the streets, but I'd be relieved.

The D&D cycle can start anew with some fresh perspectives.

 

[GreyLord]

Drop me a PM when you do.

Starting some basic ideas already...I'll post them in the forum probably after a get a framework up (but not one that has to be stuck with by ANY means...as long as it's OGL compatible it can be changed in direction, form, anything).

Or I guess we could start a list (maybe via the CMG?)

 

[Dykstrav]

What will folks do if Hasbro pulls the plug on D&D?

On a personal level?

I'd shrug and keep playing Pathfinder. I might grab a few 4E books from the local used bookstores with the idea of reselling them on eBay (I bet the prices would spike), but it otherwise wouldn't affect me much.

When the classic World of Darkness games went out of print, I kept playing and running them. I'll still run the classic FASA version of Star Trek for interested parties, I've played 1E (not a retroclone) as recently as 2010, and I know two groups currently running 1E games and another running 2E. Current support isn't a dealbreaker for me, the only thing that constrains me from playing other games and other editions is my available time.

For the hobby?

There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The internet will burn for months with "I told you so's" and various degrees of accusations and blame mixed with a healthy dose of snark, pessimism, and plain old stupidity.

People will fall upon remaining inventories of D&D material like locusts, prices on the secondary market will be artificially inflated for a while.

Some groups will continue with business as usual. The end of official support for D&D won't have much of an affect on them. Other groups won't be as fortunate.

Many surviving pockets of gamers will become even more insular than they are now--groups will use isolation from one another as a defense mechanism against the edition war to end all edition wars. Such groups will become institutions in and of themselves, much like surviving BECMI, 1E, 2E, and 3E groups are now.

Others will become evangelists, trying to start online petitions or form their own businesses to "save" D&D. They will speak boldly of a glorious new golden age of D&D that's right around the corner if enough people buy into their party line, but most people won't take them seriously.

Perhaps most interestingly, we'll get to see what happens when Dungeons & Dragons Insider goes dark. But that's a big enough thing for an entirely different thread.

For the industry?

Honestly... I think that the industry reaction won't be as wild as we suppose. If D&D gets shelved, people that work on D&D at WotC will see the writing on the wall before we do. They'll do what they can to get into other positions within the company or within others. Various websites, podcasters, bloggers, and other sources will scrabble for interviews with the final batch of the D&D staff. It'll be discussed for a long time.

Other effects through the industry will simply be an extension of what we're currently seeing now: a variety of companies will put out competing products claiming to hearken back to classic versions of the game, each proclaiming itself as the "true" inheritor to "real" D&D. As Pathfinder is arguably the most successful of such games at the present, it will likely be the de facto leader in the tabletop RPG category. Paizo will make further efforts to increase the players base of its games and will become the "gateway game" to the entire hobby, directly or indirectly.

...for the rest of the world?

The Hobby would become an even more obscure and fringe hobby compared to the mainstream. Within 5 years, people will be saying "You play D&D...?!?" "I thought that fad died out decades ago..."

I think that the end of official D&D would get a soft news story on NPR or some outlet that covers pop culture or geek-related issues. At best... Steven Colbert may say something about it on the Colbert Report, and many viewers would likely be surprised that D&D was still in print up until then.

Honestly... I think that most of the rest of the world already thinks of D&D as a kitschy bit of '80s retro nostalgia, right up there with legwarmers and the Walkman. Several of the people that I played 3E with (circa 2002-2003) thought that D&D had went out of print at some point. When I tell people that I play role-playing games, they don't even think that I mean something other than video games. Hell, as far back as the 2E days of the mid-'90s, people that work at big retail stores think that I want video game guides or comic books when I ask about D&D.

My wife started with tabletop gaming in 2001... With 1E. That's what the group she was with played and that's what they introduced her to. She got her copy of the 1E Player's Handbook in a used bookstore and it never occurred to her that there were different versions of the game at all until we started dating in 2004.

When I was living in California in the late '90s, the vast majority of 2E players I met started tabletop RPGs with Vampire: the Masquerade. They branched out into various versions of D&D when they were introduced by older players that started with D&D and played Vampire too. I met a small handful of people who started in the same way with Call of Cthulhu and the West End Games version of the Star Wars RPG. It was actually more common to find people there that started with games other than D&D.

Some people know of Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms as a novel line, but in my experience, tabletop RPGs are still just as "obscure and fringe" as they have ever been. I just can't imagine that they'd suffer more in that respect with a lack of official support.

I think that finding new players will be just as easy or difficult as it is now.

 

[Argyle King]

"We heard some things that are very, very hard for a company to hear. We heard that our customers felt like we didn't trust them. We heard that we produced material they felt was substandard, irrelevant, and broken. We heard that our stories were boring or out of date, or simply uninteresting. We heard the people felt that >we< were irrelevant.

I know now what killed TSR. It wasn't trading card games. It wasn't Dragon Dice. It wasn't the success of other companies. It was a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy. TSR died because it was deaf." - Ryan Dancey


Oddly, it's exactly the set of ideas talked about here within Ryan Dancey's own words which make me believe his doomsday prophecy is false. Change TSR to WoTC and change card games to MMOs, and that's exactly how I feel about the state of the industry right now.

"We heard that our customers felt like we didn't trust them."

During my most anti-4E moments in the past, that is exactly how I felt. There were too many interviews with designers saying that streamlining was necessary because of an inability of players to grasp a concept.

Do I think streamlining was a good thing? Yes, in many cases, absolutely. Do I feel there are rules which are difficult? Yes, in many cases, absolutely. However, I remember feeling as though there were times when certain products were created with the idea that the customer base (and by extension myself) was not smart enough to use the game unless certain things were changed. That may not have been the intention, but the intention does not change that I was made to feel as though there were times when some changes were made because of my perception that WoTC did not seem to think I could handle something.

Somewhere along the line -even if those changes were need and even if the streamlining was needed- I got the impression that the company producing the game I was playing assumed I was stupid. Right or wrong, that's how I felt. I very well may be stupid and dense sometimes, but that's not how I want to feel when you're expecting me to hand you money for a product.

 

[Mark CMG]

Starting some basic ideas already...I'll post them in the forum probably after a get a framework up (but not one that has to be stuck with by ANY means...as long as it's OGL compatible it can be changed in direction, form, anything).

Or I guess we could start a list (maybe via the CMG?)

I'm up to my eyeballs with projects of my own but I'll enjoy watching as you get things going. Got your PM and I've sent one back real quick. Personally, I think it'll be a lot tougher than you believe but if you get something that properly uses the OGL and is recognizable enough that 4E fans would use it, then I'll XP the hell out of you.

 

[MichaelSomething]

To quote The Architect, "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept."

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I had the horrible realization while going through this thread that I actually do expect D&D to be shelved within two to three years.

I also think that if it is shelved then it will never recover, that letting it lay fallow will mean that D&D will have ceded the market forever.

I don't even like 4e, and I feel bad about it. Gods, I hope that I am wrong.

The Auld Grump, I want to find whatever yahoo pushed through restrictions of the GSL and beat them with a clue hammer!

 

[Stormonu]

I had the horrible realization while going through this thread that I actually do expect D&D to be shelved within two to three years.

Sadly, you are not alone in this thought. I don't think WotC/Hasbro would be willing to front for a new edition on the order of 5E; I'd think they'd be more willing to say "You had you're chance, now you go in the vault."

 

[Frostmarrow]

I'm going out on a limb here. D&D will not be shelved. D&D is not a shelvable product. D&D has more in common with knitting than Monopoly. D&D is an ongoing process, one that can't take a time out. The executives at Hasbro are not stupid and they are fully capable of sorting their fish. The big ones you keep, the small ones you release, and the weird ones ... you put in a tank and look at.

 

[Asmo]

Perhaps it will be like Star Trek; it goes away a couple of years, and then they reboot it and says that all of Greyhawk was consumed in the Rain of Colorless Fire?

Asmo