D&D 5E So this is how D&D 5e dies, a beautiful start only to die in disgrace because of mismanagement. RIP 5e

[LuisCarlos17f]

OK, they can fall, but they can also get back up. They suffered bad times in the past more once.

Selling is not only about to convinc customer this has to buy the product. The customer has to feel satisfied to continue buying. The prestige of the brand is very bad, because if you lose the trusth by the customer, recovering this shouldn't be too easy with only spending more into advertising.

A too agressive economic strategy could cause serious damages in the prestige of the brand.

This is a hobby, not a staple product. This means in a bad economic year, a year of "thin cows", when the families have to save money then you think twice about how you are going to spend your money, earned after hard work days.

In my land we say "greeds breaks the bag". Do you remember the fable about the goose of the golden eggs?

The right marketing strategy is not only about attracking new customers, but also keeping the loyalty by these.

Even when you are publishing a good product, the adquisitive level of the players has got a limit, and lower when these are underage. In the 3.5 ed age lots of titles were published, but not all could be sold too well, and the number of translated editions was lower.

Hasbro has to remember in the digital market the rivals aren't the 3PPs, but videogame studios, and these can be really "big fishes", pure "heavy metal" in the entertaiment industry.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not true.

People attribute emotion to systems they do not understand.

Emotion has nothing to do with it. On the contrary, it’s the lack of emotions that produces anti-consumer outcomes.

 

[dave2008]

I get the desire to ramp all the rhetoric up to 11, for that extra push over the cliff, but it's getting to the point of parody. This might have been a terrible decision, but it doesn't come close to measuring up to the true corporate malfeasance we have seen.

Very, very true. I was initially enraged, incredulous, and frankly depressed by the OGL news. I care about the OGL and 3PP and still hope WotC does a 180. That being said, I have come to realize in the grand scheme of things that, while disappointing, it is not really that big of a deal and I am now happy to separate the governance of D&D from my desire to engage with the game. At this point, the backlash is so over the top it is starting to push me to support WotC! I'm not there yet, but ugh!

 

[dave2008]

I hate that sort of sales too, and I'm technically a sales man, in that I own a comic and game store. I have a very simple formula (that works! I've been in business 29 years, own my own home, and support a family of four on my income):

1) Get customers the thing they want.
2) Sell it to them at a fair markup.
3) Repeat.

The reverse is important, too: Don't get them the things they don't want. (This is my rule for inventory management).

Any other style of sales is loathsome, IMO.

I really wish you were my local game store Fritz!

 

[R_J_K75]

Last year I'd thought that One D&D was a minor edition change that was functionally the next phase of D&D 5e.

With this OGL situation it seems clear 5e is dying and will be dead before the end of the year.

So much potential, never fully realized, now it's over, or soon to be over RIP 5e.

I'm...too weak, go on alone, AVENGE MEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee.....!!

 

[Nebulous]

Last year I'd thought that One D&D was a minor edition change that was functionally the next phase of D&D 5e.

With this OGL situation it seems clear 5e is dying and will be dead before the end of the year.

So much potential, never fully realized, now it's over, or soon to be over RIP 5e.

I really don't think 5e is dead, it will remain permanently. And I really don't even think 5.5e (or 6e, or One, whatever the hell it is) will die either. It is coming and people will play it. Will as MANY people play it as 5e? I don't think so. But the movie will do good, maybe even amazing. Think about all the 8-18 year olds who will flock to the movie and see it twice, three times, who know nothing of D&D's history or the current convolutions and absolutely don't care one whit. I don't think any of us can predict with any accuracy whatsoever what will happen in the next year. I'm just curious myself. I don't care if D&D lives or dies, I don't have a horse in the race. There will always be something else to play, and even if D&D DOES DIE...this is the game that introduced easy resurrection. It will come back one way or another.

 

[collin]

D&D 5e will die only as much (and probably a lot less) as 1e, 2e, 3x, and 4e have died, which is to say, it will not die. As long as the reference materials are out there and people want to play the game, it will be played. It may die as a cash-cow for Hasbro one day, and there will likely be other editions to replace it, but it will never truly, completely die. Lots of people play those older editions, or variations of them. If that were not so, as an example we would not have so many 1e/2e retreads and variants. The genie was released from the bottle the moment Gygaz and Co. released the original boxed set.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I don’t buy VW products and will not. I bank at Wells Fargo personally but I avoid them professionally and am planning on moving my banking once I get a chance to detangle the several decades I have with them. I do warn people away from them. There is another bank that I had a bad experience with and then I do not do business with them.

I had a hotel chain screw me over quite a while ago and I never stayed there again and directed (I keep a vague track of it) well over $50K of conference money away from them.

The theory that is does not matter to anyone is not absolute and people it does matter for tend to be loud about it.

So, not to highlight your post, but to point this out; of the numerous examples I gave, your response was, "Well, yeah. I care. I don't buy VW products."* And the stuff with Wells Fargo has been well-known since 2016 ... they just keep happening. If you really wanted to disentangle your finances as a statement, you would have by now. The reason you haven't is because ... it's hard. I'm not blaming you, by the way ... corporation do a lot of questionable things, and choosing between various corporations isn't about the choosing the virtuous so much as choosing which is the least evil.

But your lack of action is the exact point I'm getting at. It's very easy for people to announce their outrage- all you have to do is type it. It's harder to act on it ... but acting on it is really, really, really easy in some areas. "I won't buy VW products," isn't a big deal given that there are a number of car companies to choose from, and purchasing cars is (for most people) not a regular activity. It's even easier if, for example, you were never a VW shopper in the first place.** We talk about voting with our wallets- and this is important. But unfortunately, most people don't actually live this. They vote, every day, with their wallets by buying the cheapest product on line.

So I want to get to the last sentence you wrote- obviously, it does matter to some people. Everything matters to some people, and acting out on outrage by typing up screeds is relatively painless. But I'm not sure I agree with the second part (the people for whom it does matter tend to be loud about it). .... I mean, partly? Obviously, if you are a 3PP and this is causing you uncertainty, I would expect you to be vocal about it.

But based on these threads, a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of the people that are being the loudest and most gleeful about this are the people that I know have already trashed WoTC and/or 5e and/or 5.5e in these threads prior to this. People that didn't like the way that D&D was now a more progressive RPG. People that didn't like the lack of crunch in 5e. People that still were bitter about WoTC abandoning 4e. Sure, that's not everyone! There's a lot of 5e fans that aren't happy, and some are outraged and very vocal. But ... it does seem that we have a lot of people screaming that they'll never play D&D again, with the unstated earlier premise (and I stopped playing a few years ago, and I am so happy to see them go down for reasons!).

*VW is, of course, more than VW, but it's still pretty easy to avoid, especially in the US.

**This whole issue with corporations is also matched with being a fan of certain artists- hence, the "problematic fave" category.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

So, not to highlight your post, but to point this out; of the numerous examples I gave, your response was, "Well, yeah. I care. I don't buy VW products."* And the stuff with Wells Fargo has been well-known since 2016 ... they just keep happening. If you really wanted to disentangle your finances as a statement, you would have by now. The reason you haven't is because ... it's hard. I'm not blaming you, by the way ... corporation do a lot of questionable things, and choosing between various corporations isn't about the choosing the virtuous so much as choosing which is the least evil.

But your lack of action is the exact point I'm getting at. It's very easy for people to announce their outrage- all you have to do is type it. It's harder to act on it ... but acting on it is really, really, really easy in some areas. "I won't buy VW products," isn't a big deal given that there are a number of car companies to choose from, and purchasing cars is (for most people) not a regular activity. It's even easier if, for example, you were never a VW shopper in the first place.** We talk about voting with our wallets- and this is important. But unfortunately, most people don't actually live this. They vote, every day, with their wallets by buying the cheapest product on line.

So I want to get to the last sentence you wrote- obviously, it does matter to some people. Everything matters to some people, and acting out on outrage by typing up screeds is relatively painless. But I'm not sure I agree with the second part (the people for whom it does matter tend to be loud about it). .... I mean, partly? Obviously, if you are a 3PP and this is causing you uncertainty, I would expect you to be vocal about it.

But based on these threads, a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of the people that are being the loudest and most gleeful about this are the people that I know have already trashed WoTC and/or 5e and/or 5.5e in these threads prior to this. People that didn't like the way that D&D was now a more progressive RPG. People that didn't like the lack of crunch in 5e. People that still were bitter about WoTC abandoning 4e. Sure, that's not everyone! There's a lot of 5e fans that aren't happy, and some are outraged and very vocal. But ... it does seem that we have a lot of people screaming that they'll never play D&D again, with the unstated earlier premise (and I stopped playing a few years ago, and I am so happy to see them go down for reasons!).

*VW is, of course, more than VW, but it's still pretty easy to avoid, especially in the US.

**This whole issue with corporations is also matched with being a fan of certain artists- hence, the "problematic fave" category.

If it were just me, I would have pulled away from Wells Fargo completely. It is family entanglements (my kids in college and all the links to follow up on money) that have stopped me and that is ending reasonably soon..

Which is the issue many people have with D&D - as much as one person may be up in arms, groups are usually 5-7.

I do agree that many people that are extra loud bashing now are just using an excuse to bash what they did not like anyways, but there are a lot of real die hard fans that I have seen posting positively about 5e as well.

I don’t expect too much immediate impact on 5e, but they are launching the next version soon and I do see the most committed people getting much looser in the socket than Hasbro should want because of the so far poorly handled attempt to get rid of the older OGL.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

If it were just me, I would have pulled away from Wells Fargo completely. It is family entanglements (my kids in college and all the links to follow up on money) that have stopped me and that is ending reasonably soon..

I totally understand!

I don’t expect too much immediate impact on 5e, but they are launching the next version soon and I do see the most committed people getting much looser in the socket than Hasbro should want because of the so far poorly handled attempt to get rid of the older OGL.

Don't get me wrong- I agree that this has been an unmitigated PR disaster, an own goal, from Hasbro. I just draw the line at some of the over-the-top rhetoric I've been seeing.