D&D 5E What happens if other gaming companies don't have time for WoTc?

[Mistwell]

Times are different than they were. Nobody thought Paizo would dominate the RPG world.

They're not. WOTC is right now.

D&D isn't the undisputed RPG on the block anymore

Right now, they are.

because a lot of people have started really delving into other systems as well as older systems.

Only two systems really rank right now...all the rest, including older ones, are much MUCH less popular than those two.

This stuff is kept track of, by fairly objective measures.

People could just buy the core 3 and move on to 3PP

But they didn't. We're a year in, and D&D is still well on top by a wide margin.

I think Wizards might be leaning too much on these companies to the point where Wizards could be in trouble if these companies decided to do their own stuff. I think people forget that a lot of great game designers have moved on to other companies. Just because they are Wizards of the Coast doesn't mean they are automatically the best.

I will ask again - why don't you have this same worry about Paizo, who also leans heavily on freelancers?

 

[Corpsetaker]

They're not. WOTC is right now.



Right now, they are.

Got any proof to back this up?

Of course you don't so don't make claims like this unless you can back it up.

 

[Morrus]

Got any proof to back this up?

Of course you don't so don't make claims like this unless you can back it up.

No proof, of course. But an overwhelming amount of evidence. It certainly exceeds any "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold right now.

Every survey, measure, and stat agrees right now. Sure, it's not proof. But it's strong enough evidence that mocking such claims is no longer reasonable.

Icv2, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Amazon, Hot Games Chart, ENnies... they all say the same thing right now. Individually, yeah, maybe they're all wrong. But with so many simultaneous lines of evidence, the likelihood is slim.

But you're right; there will be, and never can be be proof. Only reasonable interpretation of evidence.

 

[Uchawi]

The current direction appears to be WOTC has an idea and find a third party that is willing to adhere to that idea (and constraints) to finish the product, versus a third party having an idea with an OGL to protect their intellectual property.

It is like building your house using WOTC blueprints, or having the ability to create your own. Depending on your experience it saves a lot of time, or stifles your creativeness. Who gets the blame when it is less than successful. I would prefer full control over what I do even if it fails.

 

[Corpsetaker]

No proof, of course. But an overwhelming amount of evidence. It certainly exceeds any "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold right now.

Every survey, measure, and stat agrees right now. Sure, it's not proof. But it's strong enough evidence that mocking such claims is no longer reasonable.

What suvey, measure, or stat? Do any of you have sales figures from both companies to compare?

The evidence right now is that D&D 5th edition doing good but we don't know how good compared to Paizo. One relies on Amazon while the other their own website.

Assumption isn't fact.

*shrugs*

 

[Morrus]

What suvey, measure, or stat?

The ones I listed in the post you're quoting.

I report on them continuously, it being my job. Go to the front page and find any article tagged "Industry"; click on the tag for all industry articles. There are many surveys, measures, and stats.

Assumption isn't fact.

*shrugs*

Non sequitur. Nobody said it was. But evidence is evidence. Entire legal systems are based on that very premise and there is a preponderance of evidence.

 

[Umbran]

You don't know that for sure.

The only things that are certain are death and taxes. Nobody on either side knows anything for sure. If surety is required, we all need to clam up now.

I think you are overvaluing Wizards of the Coast. Kickstarter has really opened up a new Realm in the world of gaming ...

Kickstarter is a fine thing. But it is not a sure-thing, silver-bullet for game publishers. We don't know exact numbers, but the anecdote is that a really successful game product sells 10,000 units. Unless it is WotC, and then is sells 100,000 to a million units.

We don't know for sure how well these stories are selling and we don't know how much these 3PP are being paid.

We don't know exact numbers, but... we know they were paid enough for them to do the projects so far!

People are asking if the other publishers will "fill up" with their own work. Well, that could happen but... on the other hand, why hasn't it *already* happened? If filling up were likely, why weren't they already filled up before WotC came knocking for the products they've contracted out so far?

 

[Umbran]

But you're right; there will be, and never can be be proof.

Well, in theory, there can be - the various publishers are capable of giving us the data for proof. They won't, as a practical matter, but the data does exist in the world.

 

[Neptune]

Hi,
Whatever they are doing, GenCon was epic... An EPIC FAIL!!!

I predict that having not being there this year will go down as the most cataclysmic mistake in the history of Wizards of the Coast and maybe Hasbro.

After the great buzz created in 2014, the outsourcing of GenCon game play to Baldman Games (BMG) resulted in a situation where hundreds of people walked away wondering if they would ever attend again and many wondering if they will every spend another dime on the product again.

Before I complain in detail and this gets lost, not one bit of what I am posting here is a complaint of any DM. I had some absolutely great DMs! Yeah, I had one DM that needed a lot more seasoning, but when you have 100 volunteers, well, your bound to have a bell curve of talent. My all-access DM was great. If it wasn't for her... well, she is a hero, let me just say that. It's amazing what a great DM can do with garbage.

So, on to the crux of the matter...

1) Rip Off - The All-access pass which cost $150 was a complete swindle. It was, effectively, the combination of 4 events. If you purchased the 4 events separately, you paid $40. The difference between the two options last year was that players who signed up received the brand new Player's Handbook and an advanced copy of the Monster Manual (both retailed for $49.99 at the time). This year we received 4 certificates for adventure's league. That is 4 cardboard sheets which many people left on the table. Based on the math, each sheet of cardboard cost me $25. (sarcasm).

2) Epics modules were a disaster - What can I say. Whoever wrote this, wrote crap. I could write a book about this but I'll just give you one example. I played in the mid-tier module with 4 others. The climax of the weekend had us facing off against the big-bad guy and our table defeated him before he got an attack. It was so stupidly easy that our DM called over a marshal of some sort who had the bad guy reappear. Once again he was slaughtered within minutes. Between both the season 2 and season 3 epic sessions we had about 2-3 hours where we sat around and waited because of the timing schedule.

3) Non-Interactive Interactive Epics - As I mentioned, there were two epic sessions, season 2 ending and season 3 launch. Neither made a player feel like he or she was involved in something that impacted or was impacted by anything else. In other words, we just blew through a module, hacked some demons and went home. At the end of the first epic, the lights went out in the hall at midnight before there were any announcements (GenCon and the convention center are at fault for this, I'm sure) so I guess I'll be kind and give them a bye for that. But at the end of the Saturday night Epic some BMG captain tried to shout over the noise of thousands of people to the 300 or so participants. Yes, I said shout. He didn't have a microphone. Nobody heard squat.

4) Players felt abandoned - At least I did. Where was WOTC? Players and DMs felt like they were given up for adoption by their parents. I felt particularly abandoned because I don't play Adventurer's League (AL) in stores. There was squat for home play gamers. (It's impossible for home game players to meet the rules for AL because we don't have access to the DM stuff). But more than that, there were a couple of banners over the crowd but nothing else. The setup looked like little Sally's Lemonade Stand compared to prior years. No displays, no giant beholders, no giant drow....no nothing. It's easy to say that WOTC failed but that would be too kind. They DIDN'T EVEN TRY.

There's a lot of nit-picky stuff that I would say in a different year but the disaster of 2015 was so huge that it would be meaningless to even bring those (otherwise serious) issues up now.

I didn't want people to walk away thinking this was some good experience when it was a disaster.

Oh, just so you guys get a clearer picture of how bad this was, start reading posts following this in the GenCon community forum.

 

[Jester David]

The catch with the adventures done under licence is that they need to be high quality and there's a harsh deadline involved. One thing I've learned from watching 3rd Parties is that many are terrible and blown deadlines are common. Even Paizo and WotC sometimes blow a deadline and delay a project.
If a licensed product product is late, the distributors and fans won't get mad at the people who caused the delay, they'll get mad at WotC. Because people always get mad at WotC.
If a company isn't 100% sure they can get a product out in time and there's a minor scheduling conflict, I think WotC would rather look elsewhere than foist too much on another company. That's advice people always give to freelancers: don't be afraid to say "no" if you don't have the time (or at least after the first job).

Yes, the money is good. And it raises the profile of the company. But it's likely they didn't get into publishing material for roleplaying games for the money, let alone 3rd party publishing. And almost no amount of money is worth becoming overworked, ruining your reputation with fans expecting a different product, or releasing a low quality product. And sometimes its worth it to make less money on a project you're passionate about than to get a large payday for a product that doesn't excite you.
It's also very likely the work is a flat fee, so the company might not get *that* much more money making a hit for WotC. Green Ronin might be making more money from Fantasy Age and the related books than Out of the Abyss, since they keep the majority of the profits.

I imagine right now it's not an issue, as working on the new D&D ruleset is still exciting and being able to tell stories in the Realms is novel. But what about in a year? Or two? Will they still be as excited with their third or forth storyline?