Why D&D is slowly cutting its own throat.


log in or register to remove this ad




buzz said:
Oh, I think the long-term health of D&D is very often considered by the folk at WotC. The OGL alone has insured that even Wizard's deminse can't sink D&D. It's basically public property.

Well... d20 maybe, but D&D, no. Even if WotC suddenly went under (not going to happen), I believe the Dungeons and Dragons trademark would not be available. (IANAL)

Storm Raven said:
You still need to have the Player's Handbook, because the variant versions don't have some critical elements of the rules.

You can play an Arcana Unearthed/Evolved game without a D&D Player's Handbook. It even has (different) experience tables.
 

ThirdWizard said:
You can play an Arcana Unearthed/Evolved game without a D&D Player's Handbook. It even has (different) experience tables.
But, to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't show you how to reward experience (at least the original did not) for different CRs. So you would still need the DMG. :P
 


A long term product needs to be innovative, consumable or pre-obsolete in order to maintain high-profit--which can fabricate demand. This is the crux of RPGs.
 


Why doesn't WotC publish many modules these days? There's three answers to that, and they've all been given in this thread somewhere:

1. Back in the day, the classic modules like the GDQ series or S1 sold a lot of copies because there wasn't a lot of D&D products, so people bought the modules, because that's what was being published. That stopped being the case in the days of 2e.

2. Modules are basically DM-only products, and since there are few DMs than players, there are less people buying them. Thus they're less profitable.

3. Gaming groups have much more diverse characters these days. In the old days it was easier to just put a party into a module since characters weren't as different as they are today. An xth-level party likely had similar ability when compared to another party of the same level played by a different group. As character options increased, it made it harder to just plug a group into a module. Also, campaigns have become more and more developed over the years, and that makes it harder to stick a module into an already existing campaign.
 

Remove ads

Top