My love letter to WotC

[w_earle_wheeler]

Nothing at all would stop them--I certainly wouldn't want to stand in their way.

But I wouldn't stop distributing OSRIC for its current price, either. And its current price is free as a .pdf and just over £10 as a book. They can't compete: they need to make a profit, and I'm prepared not to.

WOTC's more successful strategy for 1e would be to reprint the actual 1e books.

Exactly -- the only thing they would be selling would be the "D&D" name. OSRIC and L&L and all other retro-clones would still exist, for free, in perpetuity, as they shall anyway in our current reality.

I didn't really think about it earlier, but by selling licenses for older editions to 3rd party publishers and giving those publishers the rights to re-publish older books or supplements, WotC gets money, money without taking any risks.

They could also package an official setting (that they aren't using anyway) with each license, such as Greyhawk with AD&D, Hollow Earth with BD&D, etc. The publisher can reprint the old books (probably as-is -- no changes, just reprints) and create new material for the setting. Then after 7 years WotC reaps the material they've sown.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

If they reprint using print-on-demand technology, so the book isn't actually printed until the customer pays for it, then that's absolutely right: the risk to WOTC is zero.

For 1e and/or Greyhawk the unit price would be slightly increased by the need to pay royalties to Gary's estate. I certainly don't object to that, but it's surely a factor in the decision to reprint.

 

[scruffygrognard]

My sinking suspicion is that, if things get any worse, WotC will try to make money by making older D&D materials available through DDI (and only through DDI).

As someone who has never paid, nor will ever pay, a monthly fee for an online subscription this will be useless to me.

On the flipside, I hope the apparent failure of 4th edition will lead WotC to start selling PDFs again and start up a print-on-demand service for older products. If the market is irreparably fractured, at least they'd be able to make money off of various editions while not have to worry about storage costs and retailer discounts. As it is now, the only people making money off of past iterations of D&D are the makers of OGL-based retro-clones and D&D variants (like C&C and Pathfinder).

 

[Aberzanzorax]

ONE THING I WANTED TO ADD:

Sometimes you create/sell a product that isn't going to be a good moneymaker.

But look at that product as advertising/marketing/a focus to pull interest toward your other, more lucrative products.


For example...let's assume worlds and adventures sell less well than crunchy character modification.

I get that as a possibility... 4 players and 1 dm...likely thats a 1 to 4 sales ratio.


BUT! If there is no dm inspired enough to create a world for those players to use those rules, no one will be buying books. If the world isn't inspiring, the newness of fun rules dies out with nothing to hang on to.


So, you might look at it as "every player product sells four times as much as every dm product"...but I look at it as "every dm product helps inspire 5 people to stick with a game".



Sometimes you feed the hobby rather than lining your pockets...then the whole hobby grows, and your pockets are lined anyway.

 

[caudor]

Through the years, I have always been more excited about new adventures than new crunch. I buy them even if I don't always run them as written.

The adventure is the heart of the game.

 

[Haltherrion]

Interesting post to the game community although if you were really writing a letter to WOTC, it would need to be a lot shorter and to the point. In the business world, the letter is going to be parsed in the first few sentences and filed based on that...

 

[Dice4Hire]

If you want the cats back, you have to open a can of cat food, put out a saucer of milk, etc.

Cats are not that logical.

 

[thedungeondelver]

wrong thread

 

[MichaelSomething]

Well Alzirus, If those are the things you want out of an RPG company, why not simply go to Paizo? They're doing most if not all the things on your list anyway....

 

[Shemeska]

The kinky demon worship was going to be point #10, but somehow it didn't seem to fit with everything else.

Kinky demon worship always fits in with everything else.