Who Makes WotC's Adventures?

There are now three large hardcover adventures for D&D 5th Edition. There's the two-part Tyranny of Dragons campaign produced by Kobold Press; there's Princes of the Apocalypse, from Sasquatch Game Studios; and there's the imminent Out of the Abyss, from Green Ronin publishing. All of these are official, hardcover adventures produced for WotC by third party companies. But how does that actually work? What is the relationship between the company producing the products and the company publishing them? WotC's Jeremy Crawford told me yesterday that the term "outsourcing" is innacurate when it comes to describing this arrangement.

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If we go back a bit to when I asked Kobold Press' Wolfgang Baur about the process, he told me that "the 5E adventures are produced as a combination of studio work and WotC oversight." He went on to describe it in a little more detail, highlighting a to-and-fro between the companies -- "we'd do some portion of the work, then we would get feedback from WotC on Realmslore, or story beats, or mechanics. Then we did more of the design, and got feedback from swarms of playtesters. Then we turned over another version for feedback on the art and layout. And so forth. It was iterative..." So collaboration clearly takes place all the way through the process.

He describes Kobold Press role as "the heavy lifting in design, development, and editing" with WotC having "crucial input and set the direction for what they wanted".

Moving ahead to now, WotC Jeremy Crawford observes that "It's bizarre to see a few posters on ENWorld mistake our [D&D 5E] collaborations as outsourcing. Each book has been a team effort." The input from WotC isn't just greenlighting the book at various stages; as Jeremy tells us "Our reviews are deep. We create the story & the concept art. We write portions of the books. We design mechanics. Etc.!" As he also points out, the credits page of each book tells us who contributed to each.

So there we have it. These books aren't outsourced to third parties in any traditional sense of that word; the books are written as a collaborative effort with writing and more done by both companies.

 

[Umbran]

So then how come there's not an Oscar for "best producer" or "best studio"?

Um, prior to 1950, the Academy Award for Best Picture was given to the production company.

These days, the Oscar for Best Picture is given to the Producer(s) (up to three for a given movie, since "Shakespeare in Love" had *five* producers, and it seemed a bit much).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture#Recipients

So, not all that strong a point, JC.

 

[redrick]

So then how come there's not an Oscar for "best producer" or "best studio"?
How many book editors or movie producers can you name off the top of your head (that aren't also creatives in their own right)?

Best Picture awards go to the producers. In the mind of the industry, it is understood that producers, and not directors, editors or principal actors, take the ultimate final ownership of a successful or unsuccessful film. (It is, of course, worth noting that the term "producer" can mean any number of different things and that some producers work more hours than anybody else on a show, while other producers have very little direct involvement in the day-to-day affairs of any given film. Other producers are just big-name actors getting a bigger paycheck on a low-budget film.)

I don't think anybody is arguing that the Kobold Press and Sasquatch don't deserve a great deal of credit for the books they've done for D&D! In fact, I've seen tons of discussion around the companies doing the creative work on these projects. A ton of the early response to the upcoming AP seemed to revolve around excitement about and faith in Green Ronin.

I have seen folks arguing that, because Green Ronin or Sasquatch or Kobold Press are doing the writing and heavy lifting for these adventures, Wizards isn't putting out their own material. As if, by commissioning (not licensing) companies to create adventures for them, Wizards isn't supporting D&D 5e. That seems to be the idea that Wizards and Jeremy Crawford are trying to dispel.

Of course, I will admit, from a strictly semantic sense, hiring Green Ronin to handle the writing details on a book does seem to meet the definition of "outsourcing", in the sense that Wizards is making an agreement with another business entity, rather than several independent freelancers. That being said, the distinction seems completely and totally irrelevant to anybody but the accountants and personnel departments at the respective companies.

 

[Celtavian]

So then how come there's not an Oscar for "best producer" or "best studio"?
How many book editors or movie producers can you name off the top of your head (that aren't also creatives in their own right)?

Who do you think usually receives the Best Picture Oscar?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture

Considered the most important award at the Academy Awards.

The Weinstein Brothers
Jerry Bruckheimer
Aaron Spelling
Michael Mann (Before he became a major director)
Don Simpson (Bruckheimer's Partner)

And even the creative often produce without laying a hand on the final product other than to approve. Is that unimportant?

Ridley and Tony Scott started their own production company and produced films they did not direct or write.
Spielberg, Geffen, and Katzenberg formed DreamWorks. Spielberg didn't always work on the animated films. Spielberg helped produce The Transformers without directing or writing it.

Don't the WotC employees also write product as well? Suddenly because they're not 100% involved in every project, they don't get credit? Crawford and Mearls both write product? So when they choose quality freelancers to do product, they deserve no credit?

I don't agree with you. Producing is incredibly important. Sure, creative types get into production. They love making stuff whether producing, directing, acting, or what not. Why is it any different for RPG publishers? They love to write product, publish it, and work with freelancers on product they don't write themselves.

They still deserve credit.

On a side note, go and put your money on the line producing a work. See how it feels. It's stressful. Yeah. Mearls is putting WotC's money on the line. Their jobs are definitely tied to the success of freelance products as well as the products they write.

 

[Mikeythorn]

The WOTC model is pretty much exactly the same model as I use in my own work. My organisation publishes resources. Core resources are developed in house by my staff, but we bring in external experts for the more specialised stuff. But we don't just ask them to write them in whole-cloth. Instead I draft up a plan which outlines what I want the resource to cover, and then I discuss this with the external agency and we refine it further. They then start work, but we regularly discuss progress and I review the drafts and provide feedback. The content is often very much a joint effort, although they do most of the heavy lifting. The final document goes out with the names of both organisations on it. It is a very effective way of doing things, and much cheaper than having to hire full time staff. Especially when you are asking them to do only 6 months work at a time.

 

[Staffan]

IMO, the D&D side of the company really needs their own Mark Rosewater. He's the head designer of Magic (which is doing very well), and in addition to that does a huge amount of work in communicating with the fans: a website article each Monday, not one but two podcasts a week (which he records while driving to work), and an enormous presence on social media like Twitter and Tumblr where he answers questions from fans.

The Magic side of things is also a lot better at announcing things in advance. This fall's major expansion was announced in March, about 7 months before the release in October. This set is also the first two-set block - a change they announced last August, over a year before the release (to be fair, that was because the change meant that last year's fall block would "only" be Standard-legal for 18 months instead of 2 years). When they announced that change, Mark wrote an article explaining "This is how things work now. These are the problems with this model. Here's how we're going to change things, and here's how that is going to affect you."

It occurs to me that this probably read more critical than I intended it. My point was that Mark has built up a rapport with fans over many years (I think he recently hit 700 almost-weekly articles, making it over 14 years now) by interacting with them on many levels. Meanwhile, no-one at the D&D side has been very active in interacting with the community since the early days of 3e. You had Mearls' Legends & Lore articles, which were good, but lasted for a short while and are now discontinued. The main source of communication we have from the D&D team is the occasional tweet, plus press releases that have a bunch of corporate gobbledygook in them. Oh, and the survey results - I like those, even though they feel a bit bland.

That is not a good way of connecting with your fans, particularly after many became alienated by 4e. There are lots of residual feelings of hostility following that debacle. D&D players are generally very connected to their hobby, because it is a fundamentally co-creative one. Many DMs put in countless hours creating worlds and adventures for the game, and even those who use premade ones take part in the fundamentally creative endeavor each and every game session along with their players. Even if we are not shareholders, we are definitely stakeholders in the future of D&D. I still fondly remember the post Peter Adkison made to various gaming fora following the acquisition of TSR by Wizards of the Coast, where he said "So this is where we stand at the moment, these are our immediate plans, and here's how the integration is working out." I don't think I've ever seen something like that from Greg Leeds.

What I hope is that Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, or someone else in charge of a portion of D&D will take on the "mouthpiece" role Mark Rosewater has taken for Magic, and start interacting with the community. A lot. Does that mean they'll take some lumps? Of course, but that's something they'll have to deal with due to their poor dealings with the community in the past. Ideally, as the community gets to know them, and they get to know the community, that kind of thing will drop off.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, of course. And I agree. I guess the reason I think that it does maybe matter is that "outsourcing" carries a considerable amount of baggage with it, and, in the context of talking about WOTC, it's only ever used in a negative sense. When WotC is doing pretty much exactly the same thing as it's always done, and the same thing that everyone else is doing, just on a somewhat different scale (hiring whole companies rather than hiring piecemeal to create a "design team" as needed), my issue is that why use such a loaded term that's very intentionally negative unless that's precisely what people are trying to say?

It's like when people get all wide eyed innocent when claiming that X isn't really a role playing game and then exclaiming how they don't actually mean it as a bad thing. I'm not convinced that there is any difference here.

 

[Jester David]

Um, prior to 1950, the Academy Award for Best Picture was given to the production company.

These days, the Oscar for Best Picture is given to the Producer(s) (up to three for a given movie, since "Shakespeare in Love" had *five* producers, and it seemed a bit much).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture#Recipients

So, not all that strong a point, JC.

Fair enough. I'll own that mistake. Bad example. I have been well and thoroughly schooled in the Academy Awards.

 

[Jester David]

My fumble on the Oscar discussion got me thinking.

Scenario: It's GenCon. The Ennies. Hoard of the Dragon Queen has won for Best Adventure, which is a not unlikely event.

Who collects and receives the award?

 

[Waller]

My fumble on the Oscar discussion got me thinking.

Scenario: It's GenCon. The Ennies. Hoard of the Dragon Queen has won for Best Adventure, which is a not unlikely event.

Who collects and receives the award?

Same person who did it this time:

[video=youtube;ggdLhIbDCAA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggdLhIbDCAA[/video]

 

[Zil]

My fumble on the Oscar discussion got me thinking.

Scenario: It's GenCon. The Ennies. Hoard of the Dragon Queen has won for Best Adventure, which is a not unlikely event.

Who collects and receives the award?

The award will go to WoTC because it was Wizards that was nominated. Hopefully they'll have the good grace (and I bet they will) to thank or invite the Kobold Press crew to share in accepting the award.