If Wizards of the Coast went out of business

[pawsplay]

It's happened before. TSR went out of business and D&D out of print. It was a surreal period of time.

What I think would happen would be a kind of gold rush... without WotC pushing their license, what would stop the existing game companies from continuing to publish, without the unnecessary licensing restrictions and without an immenent threat of being sued by a solvent company?

There would be a few splinterings, and you'd end up with several D&D alternatives. Then eventually someone, probably one of those companies, would acquire the D&D license again and with it, market share.

 

[Corinth]

If WOTC went out of business, and took D&D with them, Blizzard would find themselves with a noticeable influx of new WOW subscriptions.

 

[darkseraphim]

The Internet is prevalent enough these days that if WotC disappeared and the game mysteriously died with no heir, D&D games and variants would blossom across the web. The game would enter the communal consciousness, much like chess, bridge, etc. The primary danger would be slow extinction, because in my experience veteran players tend to be quite short and discouraging with random novices. (They'll take chosen people under their wing, but if approached by Random Joe, they can be rather stand-offish. I'm including myself in this distinction.)

If the property went to another company, there'd likely be a 4.0. I think the direction of the game would change significantly ... again. Every major player out there has their own idea about what D&D should be.

 

[jeffh]

Keith should be the only one who would be directing Eberron's future of WotC goes into bankruptcy. I'd rather have the settings fall into the hands of the original creators than into the hands of others. Provided that the Copyrights are set up that way.

If Hasbro kept them, they'd be sitting on them forever until somebody pays for the D&D Brand.

That's (at most) a reason why what you described should happen. It is not a reason why it would happen, which was what you seemed to be claiming at first.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If WotC went broke and no large RRG company bought D&D and picked up the slack, the gaming industry as we know it is essentially doomed.

Sure, there will still be companies offering their products online, but these will be extremely small-time. D&D is the only RPG that's widely sold even in regular stores in the US, and the only RPG bringing in newbies in large numbers. If that falls away, game stores will also go out of business, and most other RPG companies simply can't sustain their sales level and either will have to downsize drastically or go out of business.

Anyone believing otherwise is just fooling themselves.

 

[diaglo]

Whether you want one or not, wouldn't you prefer Paizo to have the choice to publish one if they wished to?

no. but that's the collector in me talking.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Dunno what would happen, but I'm not losing any sleep over it. I'd continue playing, and I don't buy from WotC, anymore, so I wouldn't miss their products. I'd be disappointed to lose some third party publishers (e.g. Necromancer Games) as they currently exist, but even then, I think there would be product support out there from some survivors, fan groups (similar to Dragonsfoot), etc. Granted, it would be less material than we're used to, and probably not with the same production-quality we've seen, but still out there).

On the other hand, I have a ton of material I haven't used yet. And there are plenty of Internet-based support sites. I'd still be playing -- just spending less money.

 

[Henry]

I'll also point out that while Keith is a friggin' GENIUS, he's also not the only one contributing major chunks to Eberron, and really from the beginning; James Wyatt's brain manifests in there in a lot of places, too, as well as others down the way.

 

[pawsplay]

If WotC went broke and no large RRG company bought D&D and picked up the slack, the gaming industry as we know it is essentially doomed.

Sure, there will still be companies offering their products online, but these will be extremely small-time. D&D is the only RPG that's widely sold even in regular stores in the US, and the only RPG bringing in newbies in large numbers. If that falls away, game stores will also go out of business, and most other RPG companies simply can't sustain their sales level and either will have to downsize drastically or go out of business.

Anyone believing otherwise is just fooling themselves.

I don't know... I did a ton of gaming in college during the OOP years. I suspect that a great many of the "newbies" d&D brings in don't stay very long. I think if D&D were gone, other games would be the gateway for new players... I know plenty who started with Vampire, Shadowrun, Tales from the Floating vagabond, HERO...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I don't know... I did a ton of gaming in college during the OOP years. I suspect that a great many of the "newbies" d&D brings in don't stay very long. I think if D&D were gone, other games would be the gateway for new players... I know plenty who started with Vampire, Shadowrun, Tales from the Floating vagabond, HERO...

That's what many people tell from anecdotal experience, but the numbers say something else entirely. D&D is the 10,000 lbs dragon that dominates the industry - all other games are a long, long way off in their sales numbers. Sure, some people might have started with other games - I started with Shadowrun, too - but they all probably did it with experienced game masters who cut their teeth on other games, and probably some incarnation of D&D as well. Only D&D is sold widely in mainstream bookstores, and thus D&D forms the backbone of the entire gaming industry. If you cut it out, the rest will crumble.

Go ahead and ask the business folks at, say, Steve Jackson Games what they think will happen if D&D goes down. You might be surprised.

Dunno what would happen, but I'm not losing any sleep over it. I'd continue playing, and I don't buy from WotC, anymore, so I wouldn't miss their products. I'd be disappointed to lose some third party publishers (e.g. Necromancer Games) as they currently exist, but even then, I think there would be product support out there from some survivors, fan groups (similar to Dragonsfoot), etc.

The fan groups would be pretty much the only ones left - they and the ebook publishers. The entire print publishing category among RPGs would pretty much collapse, or be limited to Print On Delivery runs.