D&D 5E Ray Winninger, in charge of D&D, states his old school bonefides.

[pemerton]

WotC is a commercial publishing house that also creates valuable trademarks and associated "brand" material that it can make money from in films, on t-shirts, etc.

It's not a charity, and not even a not-for-profit.

So suggesting that it should do thing to be nice to "fans", or to avoid being unfair to "fans", seems silly. The sorts of unfairness rules that govern a commercial publisher go to the way it deals with its employees, not entering into contractual relationships with firms that don't meet labour or environmental standards, etc; and with abiding by non-discrimination requirements in sales, tenders etc. But what it says about its present or past material - eg selling them with disclaimers, or not selling them at all, or poking fun at them - is not in the realm of fairness. The only sensible evaluations are from the commercial perspective - ie is this making money (and preferably the most available given the investment), or if not directly making money is this a good way to promote sales?

EDIT: I mean, people can wish that WotC might write and publish this or that thing that they would like to buy. In just the same way, I can wish that when I go to the supermarket the icecream or the camembert will be on special. But WotC has no duty to anyone to deliver on those wishes, and failing to do so isn't treating anyone unfairly.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think that's a fairly common, if misguided, form of fan complaint. They sell books, they aren't doing favours. Anyway...

 

[pemerton]

I think that's a fairly common, if misguided, form of fan complaint. They sell books, they aren't doing favours. Anyway...

Especially weird if those fans are buying the books!

 

[Fenris-77]

Especially weird if those fans are buying the books!

I think there's a category mistake that gets made sometimes, one that conflates fans with customers.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Targeted disclaimers would certainly have made dedicated fans of those specific products much more upset, agreed. But most of the other older fans probably wouldn't have cared, so long as it wasn't one of their favorites that got targeted.

Again, targeted disclaimers are impractical and bound to miss something that would end up offending specific people, instead of just a general "older material has a 'modern sensibilities warning' on it!!!" complaint that people are complaining about right now. It's just way better to say "this may have problematic content and is a product of its time" on every non-5e D&D product than trying to separate the wheat from the tares from the 40 years of pre-5e content.

 

[pemerton]

I think there's a category mistake that gets made sometimes, one that conflates fans with customers.

I'm a "fan" of D&D in that, if I look around my room, I can see shelves with over 2.5 metres of D&D material - rulebooks, modules, setting material, magazines, etc - that include Moldvay-Cook-Marsh B/X, the Rules Cyclopedia, a "special collectors' edition" white box, plenty of AD&D and AD&D 2nd ed, a fair bit of 3E stuff, and 60 cm+ of 4e material.

Some of that material I've used to play D&D - mostly AD&D and 4e. Some of I've used to play other RPGs - Rolemaster, and more recently Burning Wheel.

I don't have any 5e material, other than what I've downloaded as PDFs released for free by WotC.

In a similar vein, I have about five-and-a-half shelf-metres of comics behind me, a good chunk of that X-Men, which stops around 1997 when I gave up on the post-Claremont era.

If WotC, or Disney/Marvel, publishes something of interest to me I might buy it. If they don't, I won't. It's a pretty simple equation! And I reckon their market research is probably as good as it gets in their respective industries.

 

[JEB]

Again, targeted disclaimers are impractical and bound to miss something that would end up offending specific people, instead of just a general "older material has a 'modern sensibilities warning' on it!!!" complaint that people are complaining about right now. It's just way better to say "this may have problematic content and is a product of its time" on every non-5e D&D product than trying to separate the wheat from the tares from the 40 years of pre-5e content.

It's definitely the safest and most pragmatic solution, and the one that requires the least effort on their parts. As I said before, efficient.

I wonder if we'll see the disclaimer applied to older 5E products once the anniversary revision is released in 2024?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

He also worked on Castle Greyhawk which...um.... maybe that's not the best example.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

It's definitely the safest and most pragmatic solution, and the one that requires the least effort on their parts. As I said before, efficient.

I wonder if we'll see the disclaimer applied to older 5E products once the anniversary revision is released in 2024?

At least we know the hexagonal mapping booklet is clean and pure.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Older gamers seem to differ on whether or not 5E's version of Ravenloft would qualify as "good treatment of classic settings". It's about more than just bringing the old stuff back. (Hollywood sure wishes it was that easy...)

"We brought back Total Recall, just like you asked. Why are you saying you never listen to us?"