It is time to forgive WOTC and get back onboard.

[Scribe]

Well now it doesn’t take much. Mike Shea said he just did it in shirt order with the cc srd.

I'd need a budget for an artist. To really do what I want.

 

[gamerprinter]

I never trusted Hasbro/WotC in the first place, so they didn't lose my trust. No need to forgive, I knew they would do something like the OGL fiasco at some point, they've done it in the past and will do it again. To me, that's an expectation, I wasn't surprised at all. If I create a support product for Dungeons & Dragons, while Hasbro/WotC may benefit financially for the content that myself and other 3PP create for it, I didn't do it to ingratiate my trust with them - my reason for doing it had nothing to with them at all. I do anything exclusively, because I see potential profit for me in doing so, and see myself capable of doing it. I wasn't even thinking about Hasbro/WotC when I conceived any third party product idea (like the one I'm wrapping up right now) - I only think of it's potential for my benefit, and my fans benefit only. I love the game, not the owners of said game. I support the game, not the owners, though they may benefit.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

The point seems to be "WotC will magically know my intentions," and "it's bad if you don't buy WotC's books but OK if you don't buy Cypher System's or GURPS' books."

So, if you have a point other than that, please explain.

Unless your point is that I'm not buying 3pp tie-ins to WotC books, but I never bought those anyway, and neither did probably most people, in which case... I'm still not sure what your point is. Unless it's to say that WotC will magically know my intentions.

Okay. The consumer who was never going to buy anyway... not the point. Okay? Please stop including this person in your counter-arguments. Honestly, I don't know how else to phrase or frame this. If this argument actually interests you, go back and read what I've previously said but assume this time I am not evil or without feeling.

Better yet... just assume I think you are a cool person. We disagree on this topic, for whatever reason. Isn't it better to just move on and get back together in the future on a different subject?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Does that mean he made a version of 5e that was so rules-lite that you can fit 'em all on a T-Shirt?

thinking....

I AM SO IN!

Also? I'm with stupid.

'My grandma went to Disney World and all I got was this Stupid T-Shirt'

 

[gamerprinter]

While I did purchase the 'disappointing' Spelljammer 5e book set, I needed to see their rules, since I intended to publish a 3PP product for Spelljammer, but otherwise, I haven't made a D&D purchase of any kind since 3.5...

 

[mamba]

This makes no sense. The fact that everyone has bought it means that it has high sales.

that is not how sales work. These are not lifetime rankings…

That, plus new players coming into the game--they would want a copy for themselves.

and what do you call that, demand / new sales. That is precisely my point.

Unless you have data that shows there's been a strange surge in sales recently?

not sure what you mean, it ranks #1, what more data do you need to know it is selling well

 

[Faolyn]

that is not how sales work. These are not lifetime rankings…


and what do you call that, demand / new sales. That is precisely my point.


not sure what you mean, it ranks #1, what more data do you need to know it is selling well

See, at no point did I say it wasn't selling well. What I was saying is that it's weird to say it's super-popular and selling well, which means not many people have it. If it's been super-popular, then lots of people have it. If it wasn't super-popular, but there was a surge of sales, then it would mean lots of people didn't have it, but now they do.

 

[mamba]

What I was saying is that it's weird to say it's super-popular and selling well

so being the #1 seller is not not selling well? I guess I am not sure what your point is… no, I assume it is not a surge and has been consistently selling well, that does not change the fact that it is

 

[Faolyn]

so being the #1 seller is not not selling well? I guess I am not sure what your point is

You would need to actually read the entire sentence to understand the point:

"What I was saying is that it's weird to say it's super-popular and selling well, which means not many people have it."

 

[gban007]

But this assumes that everyone who buys a D&D adventure or sourcebook is going to buy a 3pp add-on, which is totally not the case.

And it still fails to take into consideration all of the other gaming companies out there. If I spend $50 on a WotC adventure and add-ons, then other 3pps and other companies "get hurt" because of that. If I spend that $50 on books from, say, Mophidius, then WotC and those 3pps "get hurt."

So this whole idea that I'm hurting people because I'm not buying WotC books anymore is ridiculous. It's not like it's WotC or nothing. It's literally hundreds or thousands of game companies, and probably nobody on this site is rich enough to support every one of them.

If I may have a go at my understanding of the argument, and while I can obviously follow my interpretation, doesn't mean I actually captured what they intended, but here goes:

WOTC was previously selling say to 100k customers a year. Of those, 10% or 10k were buying 3PP products.

If through people's unhappiness to this, they lost 50% of sales going forward, then it drops to 50k to WOTC, and maybe to 5k to 3PP as there is a smaller pool of people buying and playing (I don't necessarily think this follows, as could be 50k to WOTC, but still 10k buy 3PP products, I think truth will be somewhere in the middle).

That drop of 10k to 5k would thus be causing harm to 3PP, which may not be covered by consumers going to other systems instead.

If that 50k then went to 5 different alternative systems, then 3PP offerings for any particular system would have a smaller pool, and thus may not be sustainable for them anymore to produce, depending on if they need X sales for a given product (would be case for hard copies, but not so much digital I think), and overall may be less sales if can only cater to a few systems - e.g. if 30k when to fantasy systems, 20k to sci-fi or horror, then a fantasy offering would only be able to go to those 30k.

Lots of ifs, buts and maybes in there really, and comes down to how many may leave WOTC in the first case, and how much bearing those customers leaving will have on 3PP sales upfront really, as to whether there would really be sufficient movement to harm 3PPs.