WotC James Wyatt is on the Dungeons & Dragons Team Again

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is not something to fear if you do it at your peak. Other companies do it. Magic does it. Imagine mobile phone companies just said: ok, our customers are used to their phone. It has some flaws, but we should really not improve it, so everyone can use their old phone forever.

That was literally how AT&T operated, back when it had an effective monopoly in the land line days. Innovation back then was "you can get a Mickey Mouse phone or a Kermit the Frog phone."

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Hasbro wants more D&D. Staffing up is the way that gets done, even if they lean heavily on freelancers, since someone needs to work with said freelancers.

That's it exactly. They're upping the number of books published in a year, they need more staff. It makes sense to move some proven staff back to where they belong.

 

[tetrasodium]

I didn't say "No corporation ever does this." That would be obviously wrong since we are talking right here about Wizards of the Coast, a corporation, doing it not once but twice.

I did say that it cuts against the grain, and it does. I'm well aware that the tech giants contribute substantially to open-source tools and platforms. They have figured out the benefits to them of doing so. But there are lots and lots of smaller tech companies that keep everything proprietary.

And once you get outside the tech industry, how often do you see corporations letting IP out of their hot little hands? Movie studios? TV networks? Book publishers releasing works for hire* that they own?

*Book publishers are a special case because in most cases, the IP belongs to the author, who grants the publisher the right to print and sell it for a limited time. "Work for hire" is when the publisher hires somebody to write a book and owns the result lock, stock, and barrel. The D&D rulebooks are work for hire, and so are most D&D novels. However, the Drizzt books belong to R.A. Salvatore.

how's this

Spoiler

Or this especially fitting one from the earlier 2010 dresden files rpg for the highlighted reasons

Spoiler

Those two are especially good examples since if you buy a physical copy at a flgs or something they give you the pdf free via bits and mortar Wotc is not listed on bitsandmortar. IME running fate games for a year or so at a flgs "yea buy the book & you get a free pdf" really cuts down piracy & the excuses.

Spoiler: Here's another one from pf2

While it's not an OGL, shadowrun has a free QSR download among other things, but tbh the lack of an SRD is one of the big reasons why I quit running shadowrun a couple decades back when me & most of my players (then largely IT types) started using pdf character sheets on laptops & digital device availability is even greater for the average joe now than it was for us then.

 

[Azzy]

I dunno if it needed quite that long, it's not a videogame and even those don't usually need 1-2 years of actual playtesting - I suspect six months would have done it, in terms of creating more "essentials"-like classes - TT RPG development is pretty rapid, but yeah later comments from the designers show they hadn't got as far with the design as they'd wanted to. Thus it's the rare TT RPG example of "kicked out the door" (albeit at least it was complete, just not where they wanted it to be). As an aside, I always feel like "shoved on stage" would be a better metaphor than kicked out the door for both computer games and other media examples - "kicked out the door" implies forgetting about something but that's rarely the case with games released before their time (at least in the last decade).

I mean the wishlist though is probably:

1) Productive rather the actively counter-productive marketing
2) OGL and a proper SRD
2a) Friendly/inclusionary attitude rather than adversarial/exclusionary attitude to 3PPs
3) Less of a push to digital
4) Give the game more time to develop before releasing it

And you know what? They seemed to learn almost all those lessons except 4, with 5E. 5E also has a "kicked out the door" vibe to some of the design elements. We know a lot more about the testing and stuff, but some bits of it's design feel even more unfinished than 4th felt. I'm looking at you particularly Hit Dice...

I think a lot (most?) of 4e was a knee-jerk reaction by Hasbro's lawyers to the OGL and the glut of 3PP that capitalized off of the D&D IP. There's the GSL wrich screwed over 3PP. Monsters, cosmology, and other elements got new/changed lore to be different from what came before—likely to hang trademarks on and not be usable under the old OGL. A, in some ways, drastic departure in game mechanics could be controlled and not allowed under the older OGL.

Or, at least, that's my conspiracy theory. Not saying that the edition itself or the lore created for it is somehow lesser or undeserving because of this, just that I think that much of 4e came about because of upper management being paranoid and mucking around where they shouldn't have been. I think that the D&D creative team did the best they could with the commandments from above (even if it alienated me and others like me—water under the bridge and all).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think a lot (most?) of 4e was a knee-jerk reaction by Hasbro's lawyers to the OGL and the glut of 3PP that capitalized off of the D&D IP. There's the GSL wrich screwed over 3PP. Monsters, cosmology, and other elements got new/changed lore to be different from what came before—likely to hang trademarks on and not be usable under the old OGL. A, in some ways, drastic departure in game mechanics could be controlled and not allowed under the older OGL.

Or, at least, that's my conspiracy theory. Not saying that the edition itself or the lore created for it is somehow lesser or undeserving because of this, just that I think that much of 4e came about because of upper management being paranoid and mucking around where they shouldn't have been. I think that the D&D creative team did the best they could with the commandments from above (even if it alienated me and others like me—water under the bridge and all).

I think this nails it.

Not Wyatt's fault, of course. I look forward to what he does with the way things are now, which is a very different place to be than the way they were then.

 

[billd91]

I think a lot (most?) of 4e was a knee-jerk reaction by Hasbro's lawyers to the OGL and the glut of 3PP that capitalized off of the D&D IP. There's the GSL wrich screwed over 3PP. Monsters, cosmology, and other elements got new/changed lore to be different from what came before—likely to hang trademarks on and not be usable under the old OGL. A, in some ways, drastic departure in game mechanics could be controlled and not allowed under the older OGL.

Or, at least, that's my conspiracy theory. Not saying that the edition itself or the lore created for it is somehow lesser or undeserving because of this, just that I think that much of 4e came about because of upper management being paranoid and mucking around where they shouldn't have been. I think that the D&D creative team did the best they could with the commandments from above (even if it alienated me and others like me—water under the bridge and all).

Frankly, I have a hard time imagining the business end being so wound up about IP and licensing that they'd mandate so many broad changes to the game system and the content of the lore. I doubt they'd even have that much of a clue about it at that level.
Plus, if so much was being driven by licensing and IP concerns, I'd expect that the GSL wouldn't have been so late that it felt like the team responsible for it got caught with their pants down when all of a sudden the deadlines had arrived.

I really wish someone with an insider view would drop some information about it. I've seen posts where Scott Rouse alluded to some drama, but he dropped no details.

 

[Azzy]

Frankly, I have a hard time imagining the business end being so wound up about IP and licensing that they'd mandate so many broad changes to the game system and the content of the lore. I doubt they'd even have that much of a clue about it at that level.
Plus, if so much was being driven by licensing and IP concerns, I'd expect that the GSL wouldn't have been so late that it felt like the team responsible for it got caught with their pants down when all of a sudden the deadlines had arrived.

It's just my perspective—I could be wrong (I usually am ).

I really wish someone with an insider view would drop some information about it. I've seen posts where Scott Rouse alluded to some drama, but he dropped no details.

I'd love to see more info, too, but I doubt we'll see any such thing for at least a decade.

 

[Hatmatter]

I would love to see 6e.

It is not something to fear if you do it at your peak. Other companies do it. Magic does it. Imagine mobile phone companies just said: ok, our customers are used to their phone. It has some flaws, but we should really not improve it, so everyone can use their old phone forever.

RPGs are constantly evolving. It is dangerous to not do some kind of overhaul as is doing it too fast.

5e has been very stable for years. Tasha is experimental in some ways. Such books often were test drives for concelts of the new edition. I would really ne surprised if 23 does not give us 6e.

Great perspectives, UngeheuerLich. I like the way you emphasize innovation, which is hallmark to any great creative success. Let, me, however, respectfully provide an alternate model, given that the analogies we use help us shape the narrative of the thing to which we apply those analogies.

Cell phones are technological, so that is quite different from rules systems. For the first 40 years of role-playing games, we have certainly seen new editions with significant rules changes occur for almost all role-playing games that survive. That has been the model. However, I am not convinced it must be the model going forward.

We could use instead, as imperfect as it is, the model of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before the MCU, most super heroes had a limited shelf life on the silver screen...after a few years, a decade, or whatever, they would be rebooted. In the case of this analogy, that is the old model of continuously revising RPG rules with new editions. However, due to its great success and the creative direction of Kevin Feige, the MCU has been able to push forward with storylines and to bring to a close the arc of some of its characters. If those characters come back, it is because there could be a narrative reason to bring them back, it does not look like they are on the road to endlessly rebooting characters (within the MCU of course...they will still be rebooting X-Men and Fantastic Four to bring them into the MCU)...at least for the next decade or two...there are simply too many stories to tell. They have parleyed their financial success into a way to expand what can be done with super hero films (and now, TV). In doing so, they have made decisions that would be hard to imagine given the old model of thinking (not making Iron Man 4, for example), but serve the expanding narrative (and deal with escalating actor's fees! ).

What if Wizards eschewed the convention of the past 40 years in changing rules and, instead, doubled-down on its success by pressing forward and taking D&D into a realm it has never been because such innovation has been stymied by rules revision? What if Wizards created new RPG games, even? In the first DMG, Gygax provided conversion tables for Boot Hill and Gama World characters. What if Wizards created new genre games using D&D game as a chasis in order to try to leverage the success of D&D into the success of RPGs in other genres. I know there are hundreds of other RPGs out there, but Wizards is uniquely positioned to gain traction where other game companies are not, especially by connecting said games to D&D, which Gygax was doing in just a few pages back in 1979.

And that is but one example. We could see years, decades even, of greater (more complex, more meaningful, more interconnected) campaign narratives, campaign settings, rules expansions (20+ level, large army combat, combat in different genres, exploration of game-with-games...why can't we get a fully developed Dragonchess game, etc.), and other great areas to explore. These are only my weak ideas...I am sure other people here could think of other far, superior ones.

There is a way to publish new editions of games (updating the art, including errata, making some minor changes) without overhauling the rules. The former would allow the game to continue to expand to places it has never been. We have been down the road of the latter and it requires that the company devote all of its resources to redoing what has been done, redone, and redone again before (e.g. 6 versions of the PHB and DMG, a campaign setting book or box for Forgotten Realms for each edition, etc.).

Merely a thought. Keep rolling!

 

[tetrasodium]

Great perspectives, UngeheuerLich. I like the way you emphasize innovation, which is hallmark to any great creative success. Let, me, however, respectfully provide an alternate model, given that the analogies we use help us shape the narrative of the thing to which we apply those analogies.

Cell phones are technological, so that is quite different from rules systems. For the first 40 years of role-playing games, we have certainly seen new editions with significant rules changes occur for almost all role-playing games that survive. That has been the model. However, I am not convinced it must be the model going forward.

We could use instead, as imperfect as it is, the model of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before the MCU, most super heroes had a limited shelf life on the silver screen...after a few years, a decade, or whatever, they would be rebooted. In the case of this analogy, that is the old model of continuously revising RPG rules with new editions. However, due to its great success and the creative direction of Kevin Feige, the MCU has been able to push forward with storylines and to bring to a close the arc of some of its characters. If those characters come back, it is because there could be a narrative reason to bring them back, it does not look like they are on the road to endlessly rebooting characters (within the MCU of course...they will still be rebooting X-Men and Fantastic Four to bring them into the MCU)...at least for the next decade or two...there are simply too many stories to tell. They have parleyed their financial success into a way to expand what can be done with super hero films (and now, TV). In doing so, they have made decisions that would be hard to imagine given the old model of thinking (not making Iron Man 4, for example), but serve the expanding narrative (and deal with escalating actor's fees! ).

What if Wizards eschewed the convention of the past 40 years in changing rules and, instead, doubled-down on its success by pressing forward and taking D&D into a realm it has never been because such innovation has been stymied by rules revision? What if Wizards created new RPG games, even? In the first DMG, Gygax provided conversion tables for Boot Hill and Gama World characters. What if Wizards created new genre games using D&D game as a chasis in order to try to leverage the success of D&D into the success of RPGs in other genres. I know there are hundreds of other RPGs out there, but Wizards is uniquely positioned to gain traction where other game companies are not, especially by connecting said games to D&D, which Gygax was doing in just a few pages back in 1979.

And that is but one example. We could see years, decades even, of greater (more complex, more meaningful, more interconnected) campaign narratives, campaign settings, rules expansions (20+ level, large army combat, combat in different genres, exploration of game-with-games...why can't we get a fully developed Dragonchess game, etc.), and other great areas to explore. These are only my weak ideas...I am sure other people here could think of other far, superior ones.

There is a way to publish new editions of games (updating the art, including errata, making some minor changes) without overhauling the rules. The former would allow the game to continue to expand to places it has never been. We have been down the road of the latter and it requires that the company devote all of its resources to redoing what has been done, redone, and redone again before (e.g. 6 versions of the PHB and DMG, a campaign setting book or box for Forgotten Realms for each edition, etc.).

Merely a thought. Keep rolling!

That doesn't sound like a "new" or never seen strategy

 

[Hatmatter]

That doesn't sound like a "new" or never seen strategy

I am not very smart.