D&D 5E Why I Think D&DN is In Trouble

[Morrus]

Monte's Numenera is a conflict of interest with D&D? Really?! *Laugh *Cough *Laugh

If your a Walmart employee and your running your son's lemonade stand would they also see it as a conflict of interest?!

Google "Pathfinder". It's the #1 RPG in the world right now. And it's led by ex-WotC employees who used their extensive knowledge of WotC's game to create a competing one.

 

[tangleknot]

[No message]

 

[Morrus]

It sounds like WOTC needs to try harder to retain employees. Just about everyone and their dog used to work for them

More than you know:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showwiki.php?title=Ex-WotC-Employees

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Non- compete clauses are generally evaluated on:

1) duration- most I know of cap at 5 years.

2) compensation- the more you get paid, the more restrictive the covenant can be.

3) scope- how big a geographic area you are prohibited from competing in. (For IP cases, this is virtually ignored, since it is essentially meaningless.)

4) breadth- in what fields can you be barred from competing. To use Mistwell's example, would an employee be barred from just formal wear, or in the garment making business as a whole, or in any job connected to garments (tailoring, retail, fabrics, etc.)

Basically,its all a big balance test- the courts want to make sure the former employee can still make a living, but without impacting the former employer's business too negatively.

 

[the Jester]

Seriously though, Pathfinder is just a rehash of 3.0 /3.5, anyone could have made it.

And that bears on the argument at hand exactly how?

Also, could we quit with the 4e-bashing? Edition warring is pretty frowned upon here.

 

[billd91]

Seriously though, Pathfinder is just a rehash of 3.0 /3.5, anyone could have made it.

And anybody still can. But not everyone could have been nor will be successful with it.

 

[Ahnehnois]

To be fair, Paizo has freelancers on pretty much everything. You would be surprised at the number of even hardcover book authors who are freelancers. I remember meeting people who I thought were Paizo employees (Paizo shirts and all), and finding out they were all freelancers who just worked with Paizo a lot. So a lot of them can work on "other things" because they don't actually work for Paizo.

Fair enough. That's the not so pretty side of a free market; employers taking advantage of a favorable market and finding ways to get people to do work without having to pay them benefits. As a contractor myself, I get that.

I mean, it sucks, but it seems like Cook wanted to keep making RPGs on the side, and WotC didn't like the idea that one of its' lead designers would make directly competing projects while working on D&D Next. Both sides had validity to their arguments, and it was probably best for both that they each did what they wanted to do.

That I don't know about. Of course, there are a lot of opinions on what is "best for WotC" and none of us get a vote. With that said, I think it would be best fort WotC to hire the best people on the market and produce the best product on the market. As it is, the best people have all migrated elsewhere, and the best products have been produced by other companies for quite a few years now. Not that Monte Cook by himself turns all that around, but I think they'd have been better off with him than without him. Who else have they got?

 

[Mistwell]

Non- compete clauses are generally evaluated on:

1) duration- most I know of cap at 5 years.

2) compensation- the more you get paid, the more restrictive the covenant can be.

3) scope- how big a geographic area you are prohibited from competing in. (For IP cases, this is virtually ignored, since it is essentially meaningless.)

4) breadth- in what fields can you be barred from competing. To use Mistwell's example, would an employee be barred from just formal wear, or in the garment making business as a whole, or in any job connected to garments (tailoring, retail, fabrics, etc.)

Basically,its all a big balance test- the courts want to make sure the former employee can still make a living, but without impacting the former employer's business too negatively.

Non-competes once you are no longer employed by the company don't work so well in California anymore (they used to work how you describe, but the law was changed to make it harder to use one), and in several other states. But we are talking about non-compete DURING employment, and that one is a no-brainer for most companies.

 

[Lwaxy]

Most gamers I know have time in their life for one game at a time. So yeah, games do compete for marketshare.

Most gamers I know play at least 3 different RPGs.

 

[Cybit]

Fair enough. That's the not so pretty side of a free market; employers taking advantage of a favorable market and finding ways to get people to do work without having to pay them benefits. As a contractor myself, I get that.

That I don't know about. Of course, there are a lot of opinions on what is "best for WotC" and none of us get a vote. With that said, I think it would be best fort WotC to hire the best people on the market and produce the best product on the market. As it is, the best people have all migrated elsewhere, and the best products have been produced by other companies for quite a few years now. Not that Monte Cook by himself turns all that around, but I think they'd have been better off with him than without him. Who else have they got?

I actually am OK with the freelancers bit, just because I think it would be too hard to make that much money as a full time employee, without being able to develop for multiple games and freelance at multiple places at a time. I know WotC is also generous about offering folks the option of FTE vs freelancer in some cases, I just don't think Paizo sells enough stuff to hire that many more full time developers.

I am not as much of a fan of Cook's D&D design philosophies myself - I think he works best in non D&D projects. I think the freedom from building his own system with no pre-existing concepts with regards to how the game "should be" is good for someone like him. They do have a really good team for NEXT though - there are some adventures we've been getting for playtest where I have been very, very surprised at the authors they received it from.