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Podcast #279: Hasbro Layoffs and D&D's Future
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<blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 9221494" data-attributes="member: 6669048"><p>The slower release pace was a specific choice because the rapid release rate of AD&D 2nd Ed products was a direct contributor to the fall of TSR. They were publishing so many books so quickly for so many different campaign settings they just straight up weren't selling anymore. You weren't an AD&D player, you were a Forgotten Realms or Planescape or Dragonlance player. If your campaign is in Dark Sun, there's no reason to buy a Ravenloft book because it doesn't fit into your game. And there was so much material for each campaign setting coming out there was no need to buy something and mine it for material to pull over or reskin. That's on top of the quality control issues (TSR employees were forbidden from playtesting because playing games was seen as goofing off on company time not to mention infamous editing issues like "dawizard").</p><p></p><p>And the same sort of thing happened with 3.X as Wizards of the Coast churned out 2-3 products a month (which even that was a slow down from 2e's pace) in order to keep up with all the third-party OGL material until that bubble finally burst. Which is why 4e's releases slowed down considerably from that which still failed because they focused on player material - new powers and classes and magic items - over adventures and other DM-focused material under the (correct) logic that players and DMs will buy player-facing material but only DMs will buy DM-facing material.</p><p></p><p>I'm not going to comment on the quality of the recent D&D 5e books because I've at most just skimmed them, but if you want to compare them to AD&D and 3.x and think that they're somehow worse? I think you're cherry-picking a <em>lot </em>with the older editions because there was so much glut and just plain flat bad books put out because they were churning out product with no quality controls. TSR's upper management at the time didn't care because they got paid by Random House either way - sell them the print run to put in mass market stores and it can sit on the self of B. Dalton Books for years before anyone would think to return it. So TSR got a blank check until Random House has enough and returned for refund millions of dollars of these crap shovelware books (along with god knows how many copies of the VCR board game Dragonstrike) and that was it for TSR as a company.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Abstruse, post: 9221494, member: 6669048"] The slower release pace was a specific choice because the rapid release rate of AD&D 2nd Ed products was a direct contributor to the fall of TSR. They were publishing so many books so quickly for so many different campaign settings they just straight up weren't selling anymore. You weren't an AD&D player, you were a Forgotten Realms or Planescape or Dragonlance player. If your campaign is in Dark Sun, there's no reason to buy a Ravenloft book because it doesn't fit into your game. And there was so much material for each campaign setting coming out there was no need to buy something and mine it for material to pull over or reskin. That's on top of the quality control issues (TSR employees were forbidden from playtesting because playing games was seen as goofing off on company time not to mention infamous editing issues like "dawizard"). And the same sort of thing happened with 3.X as Wizards of the Coast churned out 2-3 products a month (which even that was a slow down from 2e's pace) in order to keep up with all the third-party OGL material until that bubble finally burst. Which is why 4e's releases slowed down considerably from that which still failed because they focused on player material - new powers and classes and magic items - over adventures and other DM-focused material under the (correct) logic that players and DMs will buy player-facing material but only DMs will buy DM-facing material. I'm not going to comment on the quality of the recent D&D 5e books because I've at most just skimmed them, but if you want to compare them to AD&D and 3.x and think that they're somehow worse? I think you're cherry-picking a [I]lot [/I]with the older editions because there was so much glut and just plain flat bad books put out because they were churning out product with no quality controls. TSR's upper management at the time didn't care because they got paid by Random House either way - sell them the print run to put in mass market stores and it can sit on the self of B. Dalton Books for years before anyone would think to return it. So TSR got a blank check until Random House has enough and returned for refund millions of dollars of these crap shovelware books (along with god knows how many copies of the VCR board game Dragonstrike) and that was it for TSR as a company. [/QUOTE]
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Podcast #279: Hasbro Layoffs and D&D's Future
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