Synnibarr vs WotC

[AbdulAlhazred]

White Wolf pouring gasoline all over itself and setting itself on fire at the turn of the century is both very meta and incredibly weird. To this day, I'm not 100% sure what they were thinking.

Fundamentally this same scenario has played out with ALMOST every RPG company, including TSR! You get a bunch of game enthusiasts, generally with little business acumen. They get into an industry where making ANY money at all is ALMOST impossible, and being successful, like REALLY successful has happened about 3 times, ever.

So, you bust your butt, you build the game that was in your heart, and then you start losing money. Heck, maybe you actually strike gold and FOR A WHILE you make money, but inevitably the 20 hour days, limited pay, and necessity to chose between what will sell and what you would actually like to do (which usually only overlap a little bit) grinds you down. Then you figure out that your business dealings are basically a shambles and selling that mess is a giant swamp. If some other nerd hasn't backstabbed you by that point, you just basically walk away. This is the Circle of Life RPG Game Company Version. WotC and Games Workshop are pretty much THE ONLY shops that ever escaped that, along with SJG. Literally nobody else has done so, though a few shops are still muddling along at any given moment. Some have come close, WW, GDW, FGU, Flying Buffalo, Chaosium. Close, but no cigar!

 

[darjr]

Fundamentally this same scenario has played out with ALMOST every RPG company, including TSR! You get a bunch of game enthusiasts, generally with little business acumen. They get into an industry where making ANY money at all is ALMOST impossible, and being successful, like REALLY successful has happened about 3 times, ever.

So, you bust your butt, you build the game that was in your heart, and then you start losing money. Heck, maybe you actually strike gold and FOR A WHILE you make money, but inevitably the 20 hour days, limited pay, and necessity to chose between what will sell and what you would actually like to do (which usually only overlap a little bit) grinds you down. Then you figure out that your business dealings are basically a shambles and selling that mess is a giant swamp. If some other nerd hasn't backstabbed you by that point, you just basically walk away. This is the Circle of Life RPG Game Company Version. WotC and Games Workshop are pretty much THE ONLY shops that ever escaped that, along with SJG. Literally nobody else has done so, though a few shops are still muddling along at any given moment. Some have come close, WW, GDW, FGU, Flying Buffalo, Chaosium. Close, but no cigar!

I hate how true this is.

 

[Blue Orange]

Fundamentally this same scenario has played out with ALMOST every RPG company, including TSR! You get a bunch of game enthusiasts, generally with little business acumen. They get into an industry where making ANY money at all is ALMOST impossible, and being successful, like REALLY successful has happened about 3 times, ever.

So, you bust your butt, you build the game that was in your heart, and then you start losing money. Heck, maybe you actually strike gold and FOR A WHILE you make money, but inevitably the 20 hour days, limited pay, and necessity to chose between what will sell and what you would actually like to do (which usually only overlap a little bit) grinds you down. Then you figure out that your business dealings are basically a shambles and selling that mess is a giant swamp. If some other nerd hasn't backstabbed you by that point, you just basically walk away. This is the Circle of Life RPG Game Company Version. WotC and Games Workshop are pretty much THE ONLY shops that ever escaped that, along with SJG. Literally nobody else has done so, though a few shops are still muddling along at any given moment. Some have come close, WW, GDW, FGU, Flying Buffalo, Chaosium. Close, but no cigar!

And notably, GW and WotC frequently get accusations of being too greedy. Steve Jackson, I don't know. They seem to have just faded into the distance without imploding spectacularly. Maybe the old Texas libertarian invested well (got into crypto early?) and didn't have to push things.

 

[darjr]

And notably, GW and WotC frequently get accusations of being too greedy. Steve Jackson, I don't know. They seem to have just faded into the distance without imploding spectacularly. Maybe the old Texas libertarian invested well (got into crypto early?) and didn't have to push things.

What? No.

The GURPS line did OK, great for an RPG.

The other side of the business did better, especially Munchkin. Munchkin is huge.

 

[Blue Orange]

What? No.

The GURPS line did OK, great for an RPG.

The other side of the business did better, especially Munchkin. Munchkin is huge.

(Googles)

They made Munchkin? Dang it, you're right. I stand corrected.

 

[darjr]

(Googles)

They made Munchkin? Dang it, you're right. I stand corrected.

I had just this convo with someone else recently. They thought someone like Hasbro or Asmodee made munchkin.

I think it goes to show how big it really is.

Among geek gaming that is.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And notably, GW and WotC frequently get accusations of being too greedy. Steve Jackson, I don't know. They seem to have just faded into the distance without imploding spectacularly. Maybe the old Texas libertarian invested well (got into crypto early?) and didn't have to push things.

Steve was never solely dedicated to RPGs. In fact he was more of a wargamer and general game designer, although he was certainly into the RPG scene. Most of his products in the last 20 years have been more family oriented humorous games and such. I mean, GURPS still exists, but very little has been done with it in the last 15 years. SJG has pretty much ruled out any new support for the system or a 5th edition, etc. So that was his formula for surviving, was to be a more general game/entertainment company and not focus on the RPG market. GW and WotC basically do the same thing, having Warhammer and M:tG properties that make most of their actual revenue. Other companies that have had some success like Paizo also, at least initially, were focused on things other than publishing RPGs. Lou Zocchi took Gamescience in a bit different direction, publishing a couple of minor wargames, one RPG, and focusing on dice, miniatures, and selling various game-related products online and at cons.

So it could be said that a pure-play RPG company is literally 100% a non-viable concept, based on the objective evidence, though the strategy of leveraging IP centered on an RPG as part of a wider set of offerings is maybe a bit more viable.

 

[Jaeger]

In the mid 1990's, WotC was buying up, and then shutting down, a number of RPG lines from various smaller publishers. If WotC bought your game, odds are it was going to be killed off. (Which is part of why the FTC was paying such close attention to the TSR purchase...)

This is the reason I can't find a copy of CUTTHROAT: The Shadow Wars RPG - Literally mission impossible.

Lots of indie proto d20 systems went away never to see the light of day again...

I wonder why they don't put them out as PDF's? What harm could it do at this point...

...GW and WotC basically do the same thing, having Warhammer and M:tG properties that make most of their actual revenue. ...

To this day MtG brings in twice the coin that D&D does to WotC. It's crazy money.

RPG's have always been a hobbyist cottage industry. D&D has always been an outlier from the general hobby. There was a brief moment in the 90's when Vampire was a worthy #2. But then they imploded with the second edition.

Which is the story of most of D&D's so-called "competition". They hit decently, but never stick the follow-up, and mismanage themselves into also-ran status.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is the reason I can't find a copy of CUTTHROAT: The Shadow Wars RPG - Literally mission impossible.

Lots of indie proto d20 systems went away never to see the light of day again...

I wonder why they don't put them out as PDF's? What harm could it do at this point...




To this day MtG brings in twice the coin that D&D does to WotC. It's crazy money.

RPG's have always been a hobbyist cottage industry. D&D has always been an outlier from the general hobby. There was a brief moment in the 90's when Vampire was a worthy #2. But then they imploded with the second edition.

Which is the story of most of D&D's so-called "competition". They hit decently, but never stick the follow-up, and mismanage themselves into also-ran status.

Right, but EVEN D&D managed to do that once! So, as you point out above, M:tG is still 2/3 of WotC's revenue. Without that its possible D&D would have died a couple times over at WotC too. Its amazing that D&D is actually kicking some butt right now, and it certainly is the 900lb Gorilla of RPGs. Look at Paizo these days with PF, clearly its fading. I live just down the road, from Redmond, its pretty clear they can't pay even a living wage effectively. I'd be surprised if they're still in business in a couple more years, at least in their current form. That's basically the 3rd most successful current RPG company today after WotC and GW.

But to tie it all back to the original topic: Its preposterous to imagine that WotC would have ever thought any other RPG company, GW aside, ever constituted a serious threat to them that would have even raised their notice, let alone lead to them burning money on buying it out! All you have to do is wait a couple years. Nor IMHO did WotC buy very many such, just a couple games that some people's friends wrote, basically.

Which of course wraps it all back to Synnabarr and the sheer ridiculousness of the idea that Peter even noticed its existence in a business sense. He may well have liked some of the material, it has some interesting bits to it here and there. I bet Ryan's campaigns were/are a lot of fun too. If, for some reason, I was really determined to use some of the material I would convert it to something else though, immediately. Some sort of a PbtA or something might work. It would certainly be a good bit different from other games of that ilk, but it would probably work. I am pretty sure it would work 20x better than the game's actual rules, which are pretty close to unintelligible and purely arbitrary IMHO.

 

[Staffan]

Look at Paizo these days with PF, clearly its fading. I live just down the road, from Redmond, its pretty clear they can't pay even a living wage effectively. I'd be surprised if they're still in business in a couple more years, at least in their current form. That's basically the 3rd most successful current RPG company today after WotC and GW.

One of Paizo's employees (I think it's Michael Sayre) recently posted a "thank you" note to Reddit where he said that events of the last few years have been really hard on Paizo (Covid, supply chain issues, losing a lot of people to better-paying jobs at Wizards and other places), but even so PF2 is selling better than PF1 ever did.

As I mentioned in another thread, just because Paizo have lost "ranking", that doesn't mean they've lost sales. The RPG market is vastly bigger now than when 5e was released, and that means that even if you get a smaller percentage the size of the pie is growing so much that you still get more pie.

That said, their people are still underpaid and should be paid more.