D&D 5E Monte Cook Leaves WotC - No Longer working on D&D Next [updated]

[Kobold Boots]

I'm being a bit silly with this post but I think it deserves to be said:

5E does not need to be 4E, 3E, 2E, or 1E. Mearls's stated design goal was to be a game for all people and that, by definition means that it's none of these things on their own.

I also think that Mr. Cook's departure doesn't affect the stated design goal. Play-test will be underway in a short time and we've been told that the game will have modules to allow DMs to build the edition they want. By virtues alone this means that game balance will be affected depending on your choices so if you like the balance point of 4e then you can create that; if you like a more wide open game you can do that too (3e) or a much simpler game (1e).

Those should be the merits the new system is judged against, not people concerns. My opinion is that most of the conversation we're having in this thread is slightly unfounded based on the facts we have of the system to date and I'll be glad to post a "company sucks" post when I've got enough to go on, if appropriate.

 

[Falstaff]

Yeah, like I said, I'm willing to give 5th edition a chance; I just don't have much hope based on the products WotC has offered over the past several years.

 

[Balesir]

Yeah, like I said, I'm willing to give 5th edition a chance; I just don't have much hope based on the products WotC has offered over the past several years.

Each to their own. After mostly giving up on D&D way back, after playing OD&D, original Basic and early AD&D, I have come back in recent years precisely because what they have been producing seems to me far more competently designed than what came before. As I would hope it would be - building on the foundations that went before, and all - but that logic didn't seem to apply to 2e, and 3e only did part of the job, for me.

 

[diamabel75]

Didn't Monte say at one time that 3.5 was planned almost as soon as 3 was released (or before)? This makes me nervous that something like that Bs is planned again.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Didn't Monte say at one time that 3.5 was planned almost as soon as 3 was released (or before)? This makes me nervous that something like that Bs is planned again.

Computer software comes out in 2-3 year increments
New car models come out annually.
New clothing fashions come out seasonally.
There are likely other examples; all of which are in the pipeline when the current cars, clothing and software are deployed.

Why should game publishing at a significant scale be any different? At some point payroll, resource allocation and scheduling needs to be done significantly in advance to allow for any innovation to occur.

I think Mr. Cook's point of view is important but I also think that personal bias plays into public comments and sometimes (just sometimes) the better move is to keep oneself quiet. Reason: comments that sound great when said, often sound worse when reflected upon or used by others with less perspective.

 

[diamabel75]

Computer software comes out in 2-3 year increments
New car models come out annually.
New clothing fashions come out seasonally.
There are likely other examples; all of which are in the pipeline when the current cars, clothing and software are deployed.

Why should game publishing at a significant scale be any different? At some point payroll, resource allocation and scheduling needs to be done significantly in advance to allow for any innovation to occur.

I think Mr. Cook's point of view is important but I also think that personal bias plays into public comments and sometimes (just sometimes) the better move is to keep oneself quiet. Reason: comments that sound great when said, often sound worse when reflected upon or used by others with less perspective.

I'm not saying it should. We will never know the whole truth to this departure, nor what the actual plan was when 3.0 was being planned. The claim about 3.5 may be incorrect, but it always sounded to me like they purposely released an inferior product just so they could release the better one later and get more money from pockets. If that was the case, then it is quite different than your examples. But, like I said, we will never truly know for various reasons. Even if somebody came out and said that this was the case there would always be people claiming otherwise.

 

[Kobold Boots]

I'm not saying it should. We will never know the whole truth to this departure, nor what the actual plan was when 3.0 was being planned. The claim about 3.5 may be incorrect, but it always sounded to me like they purposely released an inferior product just so they could release the better one later and get more money from pockets. If that was the case, then it is quite different than your examples. But, like I said, we will never truly know for various reasons. Even if somebody came out and said that this was the case there would always be people claiming otherwise.

So fundamentally I agree with you. Here's another opinion:

1. Every company that releases a product is releasing an inferior product in comparison to the next product they release in the same family of products if they're doing business properly.

2. The purpose of point one above is to make more money from customers whether or not it's the same customers or new customers; the mix is different from product to product.

3. Development time for a new release is dependent on sales figures and what targets the company sets such that certain levels of sales need to be maintained. If WoTC/Hasbro set a certain target for sales that was aggressive, then if the projections are conservative, you'd need to begin production on the next major release of core books 3-4 years later. Cars have a 2 year sales target, Clothing has a 3 month sales target. These targets drive the product lifecycle.

Whether or not anyone is annoyed by a product schedule has a lot to do with understanding what the cycle should be in the first place and what level of sales needs to be maintained to support the basic company functions such that the product can continue to be sold. When people talk about a 10 year lifecycle of the previous product in a non-Internet, non-videogame world where TSR was a much smaller concern than WoTC they're setting an unrealistic expectation.

So if they need to put out a new edition every three years such that the company can continue to put out the game at all.. well there you go. It's cool for Monte to be annoyed by it as it is for everyone else, but I don't know that the statement itself is worthy of the level of angst it generated all things considered.

 

[Balesir]

Whether or not anyone is annoyed by a product schedule has a lot to do with understanding what the cycle should be in the first place and what level of sales needs to be maintained to support the basic company functions such that the product can continue to be sold. When people talk about a 10 year lifecycle of the previous product in a non-Internet, non-videogame world where TSR was a much smaller concern than WoTC they're setting an unrealistic expectation.

I'm right with you with the exception of the bit I have highlighted, here.

The volume of business/margin required of a product line needs to relate to the level of resource dedicated to its support, for sure, but this need have nothing to do with the size of the corporation involved. The "unrealistic targets" seem actually to be coming from Hasbro - whose CEO has apparently decided that product lines (defined by some arbitrary grouping standard) need to net some minimum level of volume for them to be a "worthy" part of the portfolio.

There is really nothing - save some sort of blinkered dogmatism - to justify this. The key metric is earnings returned per unit of investment; the idea that a large business has some sort of minimum level of investment it needs to make into every product line is absurd. The management arrangements for smaller lines may need to be different, sure - but to say "oh, we're an X billion dollar corporation, so we can't possibly maintain a (profitable) line that grosses less than 200 million a year" is just daft. You just invest less in lower grossing lines - simple.

 

[Kobold Boots]

I'm right with you with the exception of the bit I have highlighted, here.

The volume of business/margin required of a product line needs to relate to the level of resource dedicated to its support, for sure, but this need have nothing to do with the size of the corporation involved. The "unrealistic targets" seem actually to be coming from Hasbro - whose CEO has apparently decided that product lines (defined by some arbitrary grouping standard) need to net some minimum level of volume for them to be a "worthy" part of the portfolio.

There is really nothing - save some sort of blinkered dogmatism - to justify this. The key metric is earnings returned per unit of investment; the idea that a large business has some sort of minimum level of investment it needs to make into every product line is absurd. The management arrangements for smaller lines may need to be different, sure - but to say "oh, we're an X billion dollar corporation, so we can't possibly maintain a (profitable) line that grosses less than 200 million a year" is just daft. You just invest less in lower grossing lines - simple.

I get where you're coming from. Here's another point of view:

Really successful companies look to streamline their product lines and costs. As an example.. one publisher I know of specifically chooses to only publish fiction and biographical works when there's a very, very high chance that they'll end up on the best sellers lists. Another chooses to service product lines in addition to the fiction and biographical.

The one with the fewer products and a higher percentage of best sellers survived the recession, grew through it, and had several properties do well enough to fund movie adaptations. The one that didn't found itself filing for bankruptcy and outright cancelled a few lines before that.

So when I'm looking at Hasbro and I characterize them as big company with many product lines that needs to make decisions about what product lines to keep and which ones to scrap, there's a deeper equation there.

1. What is the necessary margin that the company wants to maintain such that we can guarantee a certain amount of income after taxes?

2. What is a decent product portfolio number to gauge our lines against?

3. What is the net promoter score and brand value of the lines we're evaluating?

The above set some margin number that's the same for each brand but may result in different numbers when compared to the cost of production for the product line. It may be 50 million for Magic and it may be 50 million for D&D all things being judged, but that may require more sales for Magic and less sales for D&D to make the cut (or vice versa).

The problem is when a product line has so much dedicated to it in terms of production cost that it can't compete against a line that is optimized to reduce costs.

So functionally, I agree with your statement as presented. Arbitrary assignment of numbers is stupid. I just don't think that the designers are the best judges of business needs, nor do I think they'd be in on the business meetings where they'd get the information needed to make responsible statements about the situation we're on about.

From a purely business point of view, depending on the size of the firm, if I'm putting in say 150 million to make 200 million and that nets 50, then I'm ok. If I'm putting in 150 million to make 160 million and net 10.. that's almost not worth getting up in the morning for when I'm running a billion dollar firm and make more in salary and options than I'm netting on the product line and I could be investing in Bakugan or Pokemon or whatever and really making some serious money.

Perspectives. I don't really think the CEO of Hasbro makes that much cash, but it's not out of the realm of CEO and CMO pay averages and that line of thinking happens.

 

[Aehrlon]

Total pay for Hasbro Inc.'s HAS -1.70% President and Chief Executive Brian Goldner declined 67% to $7.6 million in 2011... that's a crap-ton of money. Do the math of what he earned the previous year and it's a RIDICULOUS amount of money. His drop in pay was due to stock/options losses of 77%. Regardless, that's crazy good money; the kind where you're set for life on half a year's salary. And I bet he pays less of a percentage of taxes than I do. Overall, since they pay the boss that much, I think they can afford to bankroll D&D Next and make sure it's a good product. Here's the source if you want to read more about it: Hasbro CEO&

You may want to start another thread for market analysis & corporate earnings.

Back on topic, Monte's departure hopefully will not negatively affect the final product. But I would not be surprised if it meant a few delays. When you lose your Lead Designer (who is one of three, so 33.33% of the total design team). AND if it was a question of salary that was the catalyst for Monte leaving, well, the above numbers certainly show that they could have made it worth his while to stay on-board.