[Updated] Chris Sims & Jennifer Clarke Wilkes Let Go From WotC

The details are unclear, but D&D editor Chris Sims has reported that he is now in need of a job, and is willing to relocate. He was hired by WotC in 2005 after working for them as a freelance editor. Part of the D&D 5E launch, he was one of the editors for the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, and was responsible for stat block development in the Monster Manual. The reasons have not been revealed, nor is it clear whether he left or was laid off.

Whether this is an isolated thing or part of more layoffs if unclear right now. More if I hear anything! In the meantime, if you can hire an excellent writer and editor, please do!

For more on ex-WotC employees, please check my list here!

UPDATE: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes is also in the same boat. She has worked on both D&D as an editor and on Magic: the Gathering, and has been working for WotC for many years.

UPDATE 2: Chris Sims confirms here that he and Jennifer were both laid off.

 

[Torg Smith]

How many of these links are still good?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?154448-Free-Adventure-Path

But be sure to understand this much, FWIW -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...e-Path/page4&p=6150502&viewfull=1#post6150502

The files I was referring to had been taken down quite some time before. They included the adventure in the A, U and a number of other series. The Volo Guides and a bunch of stuff they are selling now. I have purchased the new ones as the quality is so much better then they had done back then.

 

[Mark CMG]

The files I was referring to had been taken down quite some time before. They included the adventure in the A, U and a number of other series. The Volo Guide's and a bunch of stuff they are selling now. I have purchased the new ones as the quality is so much better then they had done back then.

Indeed. Still, there was a ton of free stuff from the 3.XE era that they have made unavailable that could help fuel their customers' campaigns.

 

[Staffan]

In what way is dndclassics.com not an online store? Other than the 3 and 1/2 years they did not sell PDFs, since around 2005 they've sold PDFs online for most of their product back catalog.

I don't recall the exact year, but Wizards selling PDFs go back farther than that - pre-3e, even.

Way back when, on the heels of the success of the Core Rules II and Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas CD-ROMs, Wizards decided to launch an ambitions project - they were going to make a CD-ROM with PDFs of all the FR books on it, and asked people for copies of books they could scan (apparently, they didn't have books themselves in good enough condition). The process started, but after a while someone in charge pulled the plug - the thing was getting way too expensive. They decided to instead offer the scanned books for sale as individual downloads, for something like $3 each. These books were amazing quality - they didn't just scan images of the pages, but rather OCRed all the content and put it into the original layout as text. They weren't quite as good as having the original files from the publisher, but very close to it. Eventually, other product lines were covered by it, but at some point they decided to skimp on the quality (Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, Dark Sun, and maybe Dragonlance were released as "good" PDFs, but Planescape as not-so-good).

 

[Mark CMG]

WotC halts sale of pdf's through RPGNow/DriveThruRPG in April of 2009 -

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2jhqs?WotC-halts-PDF-sales

D&D Classics went live Jan 22, 2013

http://garycon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1003&start=0

 

[kenmarable]

Everyone uses someone else's platform(s) in some ways. Even if it's just a credit card processing agent, or a web development company that fits the shopping cart into their main site. There is no issue I know of with using OneBookShelf as the back-end with D&D branding on the front-end. What, you think changing the url to "wizards.com/purchase" would be a meaningfully different? I don't. In fact I'd say the security and design elements are far superior than what WOTC would end up doing if they hired someone to program it in-house. And I think it's better than Paizo's shopping cart system in many ways as well. What do you see as the issue with using OneBookShelf as the back-end?

I think you misunderstand me. I have no problem with WotC using other companies as distributors. Whether it is a good idea or not is a numbers game of costs and benefit and it makes sense to do it in house or allow someone else to doesn't matter to me. I was just pointing out that WotC does not have an online store front of their own at all.

OneBookShelf isn't just some back end designer. It is a completely separate business. They are DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, etc. Just as Amazon. Barnes & Noble, and your FLGS are separate from WotC. WotC simply sells through retailers.

I just saw in this thread someone claimed WotC would be better off selling direct (debatable - it's working great for Paizo, but it took time and investment to build that up), but your response wasn't just that it would be a bad idea (I agree, it likely would be especially if they won't even invest in having editors on staff) but your response was that they do in fact have an online store front with dndclassics.com.

My point is that saying WotC has their own online store front is analogous to saying Kleenex has 11,000 stores worldwide because they are sold at Wal Mart. Best Buys aren't counted as Apple-owned stores just because they have a special section of the store branded with Apple logos. The manufacturer and retailer are separate businesses. WotC is letting OneBookShelf use their name and branding, but WotC does not have their own store front.

Check their "About Us". WotC wasn't started in 2001 by James Mathe.

 

[Mistwell]

WotC halts sale of pdf's through RPGNow/DriveThruRPG in April of 2009 -

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2jhqs?WotC-halts-PDF-sales

D&D Classics went live Jan 22, 2013

http://garycon.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1003&start=0

Are you arguing 3 years 8 months (or is it 9?) is a meaningful difference than the rounding I did of 3 years 6 months? OK Mark...I was off by 2-3 months.

 

[Mistwell]

I think you misunderstand me. I have no problem with WotC using other companies as distributors. Whether it is a good idea or not is a numbers game of costs and benefit and it makes sense to do it in house or allow someone else to doesn't matter to me. I was just pointing out that WotC does not have an online store front of their own at all.

Yes. They do. See all the branding on dndclassics? That's all WOTC stuff. Nobody else's stuff is sold on dndclassics.

OneBookShelf isn't just some back end designer. It is a completely separate business.

How can you claim something is completely separate when all the branding is the same?

They are DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, etc. Just as Amazon. Barnes & Noble, and your FLGS are separate from WotC. WotC simply sells through retailers.

Bad comparison. It's an exclusive joint venture, with just WOTC products, with the product listings controlled by WOTC and only WOTC. All those other companies sell everything, not just one company's stuff.

My point is that saying WotC has their own online store front is analogous to saying Kleenex has 11,000 stores worldwide because they are sold at Wal Mart.

Does Wal Mart sell only kleenex products and nothing else? No. Because it's a bad analogy. This is WOTC products, with listings controlled by WOTC.

Best Buys aren't counted as Apple-owned stores just because they have a special section of the store branded with Apple logos. The manufacturer and retailer are separate businesses. WotC is letting OneBookShelf use their name and branding, but WotC does not have their own store front.

They are not "letting" them do it, it's a jointventure with them, and it's WOTC sending it over for exclusive listings, with WOTC controlling it, as a WOTC storefront carrying only WOTC branding and products.

Check their "About Us". WotC wasn't started in 2001 by James Mathe.

Yes they have their normal iframe over it because WOTC hasn't put their frame on it...doesn't change anything about it being totally not analogous to a store that sells everyone's products with their own branding and with listings and control by that store as opposed to the brand owner.

 

[kenmarable]

They are not "letting" them do it, it's a jointventure with them, and it's WOTC sending it over for exclusive listings, with WOTC controlling it, as a WOTC storefront carrying only WOTC branding and products.

Yes they have their normal iframe over it because WOTC hasn't put their frame on it...doesn't change anything about it being totally not analogous to a store that sells everyone's products with their own branding and with listings and control by that store as opposed to the brand owner.

This is pretty far off on a tangent and probably going to just wind up arguing semantics of what it means for a business to "have" a site, but this:

http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

and this:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

and this:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

are all the same business. In fact it is the exact same database, same product IDs, and looking at the page source, same exact code, just referencing "themes/dnd/" "themes/dtrpg/" and "themes/rpgnow/".

WotC may be sending them content, but they are not running anything over there since it is all one site. Different URLs just display different themes.There are no iframes for WotC to replace, because there's likely only 1 about us page that exists on that server. Only 1 home page for dndclassics, DriveThruRPG, DriveThruComics, DriveThruCards, DriveThruFiction, WargameVault - all of which are listed and accessible on the left side of every page of dndclassics.

Heck, go to dndclassics.com and click "My Library". Every RPGNow or DriveThruRPG product you ever bought is listed there. Same thing with "Account" listing every non-WotC order, "My Wishlist" including every non-WotC item.

It is all OneBookShelf. WotC does not own nor run it. Instead, OneBookShelf is taking I'm sure much more than "a very small portion" of the revenue, just as Amazon, B&N, etc. etc. all take their portion of the revenue as retailers for WotC products.

When I say that WotC does not have their own store front, I only mean that it does not own and operate their own store front in the way that Paizo owns and operates their own store front. WotC does not sell anything, they let others do it for them. That's all I'm saying.


P.S. Oh, and what is this campaign setting?!! They are also bringing back all the classics! Wow!

Sorry, it's late here and I'm getting silly.

 

[Steven Winter]

All this dickering over semantics is really dragging discussion away from the point I hoped to make. OK, let's say I formulated my thoughts badly. What I should have typed was "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers." I thought that was clear from context, but it's apparent I was wrong.

Steve

 

[R_Chance]

All this dickering over semantics is really dragging discussion away from the point I hoped to make. OK, let's say I formulated my thoughts badly. What I should have typed was "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers." I thought that was clear from context, but it's apparent I was wrong.

Steve

I thought that was obvious, but maybe that's just me... selling PDFs of out of print older material is what D&D Classics does (and I'm not knocking that). Paizo sells their dead tree books directly as well as through both hobby and book channels. And of course they have subscriptions to a number of their product lines available although you need a certain amount of material to make that viable.