Interview with Scott Rouse, Chris Perkins & Bill Slavicsek

[Felon]

Here's question that was asked:

Our understanding at present is that the online content is set to replace the magazines. What factors were involved in the decision to replace one with the other, rather than to allow the two media - the online platform and the magazines - to co-exist?

Here was the response:

Chris: Our online content plans will replace the printed magazines. That aside, we are still very much in the business of producing printed products.

Bill: I also want to take a moment to quell some related rumors. D&D is not going away. In no way do our plans call for the end of face-to-face tabletop gaming. We are not making an MMORPG. We will continue to produce printed, for-sale, published products.

Is it just me, or are these not answers to the question posed to them?

We already know that the online content plans will replace the printed magazines. The question was, why "replacement" instead of "co-existence"? I think we can guess the answer. Just come out and say it.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

What would you hope for? What would make this exciting and useful for you? Another question for the community: How much of the magazine content were you able to use in your campaign? How much work did you have to do to accomplish that? If this new incarnation of the magazines could encompass anything you could want, what would that be?

I want to answer this question - the challenge for me in using Dragon's content is portability. I can't bring 100 back-issues to my game. It would be a huge hassle, and copying/scanning/re-typing it is a lot of time and effort.

I'd like to see some method of saving a "campaign profile" on the new site. Each article might have monsters, or feats, or spells; what I'd like to have in addition is a master list (or multiple master lists - like one for monsters, one for feats, etc) that has a check box by every feat, or group of feats, so that you can select them individually, or in groups. Those selections could then be compiled into the campaign profile, so that you could print out or view online a "Feats chapter" or Monster Manual of only the items you want to use in your game. The Master lists could include core material and material from other books (the complete books, MM4, etc)

For example, I coud select the PHB feats as a whole, maybe all the feats from an article about swashbuckling (selected as a group), and then several (but not all) feats from an article about undead. Then I could turn that into a useable output either viewable onscreen or as a downloadable option (ideally), like a PDF or HTML or XML output. Then I could go back over time and add or subtract to the Campaign Profile; ideally I could have more than one.

That's an example of how this could be made very useful to me.

 

[MerricB]

At least there's going to be print compilations alongside the online content.

Honestly, that's how a lot of D&D books got written. Unearthed Arcana (1e) being the poster child for that, but it's not alone (AD&D Player's Handbook). Material got printed first in Dragon magazine or similar (The Strategic Review), then the best of it got massaged into shape and printed in official books.

Classes like the Cavalier, Barbarian, Ranger and Illusionist saw their starts in the pages of The Strategic Review and The Dragon. A lot of material in Dragon Magazine rightfully has never seen the light of day again, but the great stuff gets reprinted in official rulebooks.

Cheers!

 

[Mercule]

This is a very telling quote. It means that there *is* DRM in use for certain (if there weren't DRM, the solution would be pretty obvious. Keep the PDF). How draconian (hmmm...) a DRM system is still up for grabs at least.

Not necessarily. "No DRM" is a DRM option. Plus, they are just begging for backlash if they intimate in any way that there isn't/may not be DRM and then decide there is. Much better to say, "We're weighing our options," and come out with better news than expected.

For all we know, the whole WotC staff is gung-ho for DRM-free PDF downloads but they're waiting for a Hasbro lawyer to sign off on it. Yeah, not likely, but let's wait before we lynch.

 

[Shadeydm]

These answers did absolutly nothing to sway my opinion that this was a terrible decision. Nor did it offer any concrete reason why the printed magazines could not have continued along with the DI.

 

[Ranger REG]

I gotta be brutally honest. Sounds more like a late-night infomercial disguised as an interview.

 

[Roman]

Good interview and thanks to WotC staff for answering the questions and to Morrus for compiling them.

I think the responses were good and reasonably informative given the circumstances that they are not ready to announce details about the Digital Initiative yet. Since I have never been keen on online subscriptions, I am also quite happy that WotC has decided to compile the information into print products. All in all, this sounds quite exciting.

 

[mxyzplk]

I'm a little worried myself. I work with the Internet for a living, and creating a good online content strategy isn't easy. And in general WotC's Internet presence, and most especially their forays into software development, in the past haven't inspired a huge amount of confidence that they have what it takes. They do have a lot of decent content on their site right now which if supplemented with the content from Dragon and Dungeon would be a sizable portfolio. But in terms of building an online community, "we got us some forums and sells us some PDFs" isn't exactly state of the art (no offense EN World, WotC has about a million times as much money as you do I imagine).

 

[KB9JMQ]

Well not a whole lot of answers but I really didn't expect any.
I am glad to see they want to open the lines of communication up more. It would be nice to have a regular presence by a bunch of WoTC people again.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I expect the entire thing had to be translated into meaningless CorporateSpeak^TM by their in-house lawyers before they could reply. As it is this answered no questions let alone the ones asked. It said NOTHING for all its words.

And the one thing likely to kill the entire DI is if they include DRM or prevent it from being used once your subscription is over. DRM is well-hated on teh intarwebs in all it's forms and if the new material isn't fully portable I expect their revenue to be abysmal.