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Ben Riggs has been doing an series of interview shows, with the idea being talking about the Wish spell. Last time he talked to Erin M. Evans. Also previously Tweet and Heinsoo
Transcript with timestamps in the spoiler tag
Transcript with timestamps in the spoiler tag
I'm Ben Riggs author of slang the dragon a secret history of Dungeons and Dragons and host of this show reading D and D
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aloud and I wanted to say a brief word before launching into Today's Show here
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uh we take a ttrpg text and talk about it with a ttrpg luminary today you'll be
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hearing my conversation with Mike Merles we start out discussing wish in Dungeons
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and dragon reading the spell aloud and and then the conversation expands into Mike's time at
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Wizards including why he left DND d uh but this is primarily a conversational
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sort of hangout show uh with a text kind of like Bible study for D and D Fanatics
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if you came here because of my clickbait title I just wanted you to know what you're listening to and tell you that we
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do get to Mike's time at wizards but we kind of fell into it so uh with that explanation please enjoy tonight's
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episode [Applause] Ben rigs presents reading DND D
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[Music] aloud episode 39 why Mike Merles left
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the [Music]
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indeed ladies gentlemen boys girls uh uh Samurai shugenja Ronin welcome once
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again to reading Dungeons and Dragons aloud I am apparently controversial DND
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historian Ben rigs I will uh add to that uh so-called celebrity and Apprentice
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demagogue um just I'm just you know taking notes on on on who I am here but
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I am I am nothing compared to the man that I'm sharing this call with uh with me is D and D fifth edition lead
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designer Mike mer hi Mike hello I will point out that you describe yourself as
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The Apprentice demagogue and then said I don't know how I compare to this guy which implies that I might be a higher
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level of demagogue which like I don't know if I'd argue with that because I was thinking the other day when I worked
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on fifth edition there was a moment I was on Twitter and I realized people were actually listening to what I was saying and if you've ever seen the movie
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the uh Naked Gun the original one oh yes there's a scene where Leslie Nelson's
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character Frank uh I can't remember people's names who like it important business meetings but I can remember the names of like
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characters in movies 4 years ago uh he dis he asked go to go undercover as an Umpire and he starts like he calls like
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strike on a pitch and realizes that everyone in the stadium is watching him and he gets really into it every that's
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how I kind of felt like being like when I was working on D and D being on Twitter like everyone's watching so
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let's have some fun with it right like when I realized people were listening to me I was filled with Dawning
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horror like I I can't say that you know it's funny like once once I was like oh people are
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listening to me my my posting just shot down like oh crap um but again I think
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that might also be a historian's Instinct of like well I kind of want it to be right and clean and and what I you
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know I don't really want to shoot from the hip here what I what I say I want it to be uh uh what I really think and
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meaningful I don't want to have to go and walk things back um even when I post things that turn out to be controversial
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or I know are going to be controversial like um I I never go back and think to myself that's not what I meant or uh I
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said it wrong in some way shape or form which is always my my great fear uh that I'm going to misspeak but
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yeah thank God I'm not a politician all right so you are here to discuss wish uh
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because I've had depending on how you count skip Williams I've had someone from every
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Edition of D and on to talk about it so far except for Fifth and 24 D and so here
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you are to to help me complete the circle of talking about wish uh for
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hopefully my audience is like yay another hour about wish otherwise you know this may be a
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real misbegotten Venture but I think it's fine uh so let me Begin by reading it out loud unless you want to say
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something before I read it out loud no go for it and I think it's actually really interesting to look at wish as a
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lens to get the the sense of like what is this game trying to do I do have to ask was was wish present in fourth
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edition D and D I can't remember it was not that is I think how a designer
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approaches a spell like wish tells you a lot about how that Designer is going to approach any role playing game but especially D drag well I had uh Jonathan
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tweet and Rob uh hang on Hano oh isn't it
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Hano say so I say Hino I have no IDE so uh again having them on to talk about it
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was absolutely fascinating because of course uh well and what I found is first through Third Wish kept getting more and
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more nerfed I would say um and then fourth it didn't exist at all and I have no idea what it says here in fifth so
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we're we're going to have to see yes let find out all right uh and I should ask
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who do you know who wrote this specifically about the spell that's
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a great question probably Rob schwald I you know this is like going back to the
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ancient data banks like you know it's before we had the super fast drives we have now it's like an actual physical
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arm it's such a pesty question I'm asking about one piece of text in the book that all these people worked on but
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but but this is the thing Ben you gotta understand at one point in my life that was the most important question you could ask me because we had to get this
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thing shipped so if you would ask me hey who's writing wish and I said I don't know it meant no one was writing it and we were in trouble because I was only
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getting asked that question if we needed it for the book so but I'm pretty sure Rob Schwab
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tanked the uh spell chapter I know there are some spells that got in there that I wrote uh but I'm pretty sure Rob took on
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the Lion's uh share of that work cool and for for listeners that's uh Rob Schwab of sh of the Demon Lord and
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Shadow the weird wizard which I I hear are both excellent so AEM wish ninth
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level conjuration casting time one action range self components verbal
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duration instantaneous uh wish is the mightiest spell a mortal
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creature can cast by simply speaking aloud you can alter the very foundations
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of reality in accord with your desires the basic use of this spell is to
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duplicate any other spell of eighth level or lower you don't need to meet any requirements in that Spell including
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costly components this the spell simply takes effect alternately you can create
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one of the following effects of your choice you create one object of up to
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25,000 gold pieces in value that isn't a magic item the object can be no more
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than 300 ft in any Dimension and it appears in an unoccupied space you can
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see on the ground you allow up to 20 creatures that you can see to regain all
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hit points and you end all effects on them described in the greater restoration SP spell you grant up to 10
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creatures that you can see resistance to a damage type you choose you grant up to
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10 creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for
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eight hours for instance you could make yourself and all your companions immune
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to El's life drain attack you undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll
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of any roll made within the last round including your last turn reality
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reshapes itself to accommodate the new result for example A Wish spell could
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undo an opponent's successful save a fo's critical hit or a friend's failed save you can force the reroll to be made
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with advantage or disadvantage and you can choose whether to use the reroll or
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original roll and there's a couple paragraphs left but I want to pause there for a second because uh that last
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bit there is is brought in from Third Edition because apparently Peter
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adkinson had a game go really South with a uh wish that Miss messed with time
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somehow so Peter was very insistent that wish not be able to mess with history
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and uh skip Williams as I recall and Jonathan were both kind of like uh but
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they were like well we gotta appease the boss so this is going in there so you know if you're going to go back in time it's only for one role and it's it's
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interesting to me that that that piece is still there you know in fifth edition
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cuz it's just such a specific like uh you know here here you are dming and
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this one thing happens and you're like we got to change the rules so that can never happen to anyone ever again and
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it's still in here you know all these all this time later all right I'm Gonna Keep Going list you want to say
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something want to thr one one of the things I love about that is just the the butterfly effect of you know I imagine
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it was probably a game from the 80s or something you know and just to like just to lean in if you could just send like a
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message back to that group like what you have done will change like 25 years of D&D history like what did we
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do dude you ruined it for everyone forever I shouldn't say that it's it's
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fine it's a fine rule um okay you might be able to achieve something beyond the
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scope of the above examples State your wish to the dungeon master as precisely
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as possible the DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance the greater
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the wish the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong the spell might simply fail the effect you desire might
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only be partly achieved or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a
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result of how you worded the wish for example wishing that a villain were dead
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might Propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive effectively removing you from the
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game similarly wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the
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item's current owner and I think this is getting again as we're reading this I'm like this might be word for word from
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Third Edition um it's so as you're reading I'm reading along the 5.5 players handbook and it is this text is
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exactly carried over oh wow I also found that kind of interesting all right one paragraph left
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the stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you
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after enduring that stress each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest you take 1 d10 necrotic damage per
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level of that spell this damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way in
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addition your strength drops to three if it isn't three or lower already for 2D four days for each of those days that
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you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity your remaining recovery time decreases by two days
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finally there is a 33% chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if
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you suffer this stress that last paragraph I'm not sure about that might be new but but the rest of it sounds
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pretty close to what was in 3.5 and it was it's identical to what's in
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5.5 just about so 5.5 not to be the guy who's like making
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fun of the you know the game that came after his version of the game but it it they threw in this extra few sentences that kind of like that had this very D
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and specific like or about like what happens if you make a wish that affects the plcape the city because I yeah so it
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kind of comes across as almost like hey make sure we own this so but I don't know maybe they thought it was important
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to specifically say you can't mess with the lady of pain with wish so the um I just think it's kind of funny because I
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think a lot of players will read this and they won't have they'll have no idea what that is so the U but yeah the I I
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think that final paragraph Was new because I think we were thinking through this idea that we should have some sort
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of cost associated with it specifically so that we could deal with like those
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specific effects like know heal everyone up and so on we kind of knew that this would essentially let let the wizard do
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anything and uh we could step on the character's toes so if you were like well I'll I'll I'll cast wish all the
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time using these like guard railed you know options because those are balanced so I can just keep casting
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it well then therefore just kind of making everyone else feel sad because you just got this kind of not an ey win
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button because you know they're very specifically focused on certain things but that you know that it would just get
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obnoxious after a while and we decided to include that because there's there's a funny thing that happened one of the
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biggest lessons I learned his um game balance that looks like it's just there for the purpose of
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game balance like the players will naturally push back at it but if you put game balance in there and say oh this is
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this way because a wizard did it and they go oh okay okay it was it so now we 100% accept that that is normal and of
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course we should be really careful casting wish because maybe we can't ever cast it again instead of you know the
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reaction of like oh this is this is lame they're just doing this for balance purposes boring right like so now it's like oh yes it's so but I think there's
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power there it's such a powerful spell it is it's a ninth level it's really kind of a 10th LEL spell right like it's
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better than the other the other spells you can get at Ninth level so this is just a natural way to kind of give you
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the effect of I can cast wish that's so cool but then say yeah but be careful with it don't like it also kind of
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undermines things in terms of like a storytelling it's like oh every high high Lev wizard is just running around casting wish all the time so did want to
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make it feel like it was a big moment in the campaign if a wizard took the spell and cast it and also for an NPC same
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thing you just wouldn't design encounters with an evil wizard just casting wish all the time so huh well
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it's like um when when I started this process uh
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it was because uh I want to say wish popped into like a second or third level
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Shadow Dark Adventure and again I audience you know
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this story and audience you've you've heard me read wish from Shadow dark before but I'll do it again just for consistency here um you know uh a
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charact like I want to say you put a a ruby into a statue's hand and you got to cast one wish spell and the character
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decided to like basically blow up the dungeon they were in which it's not a bad use of wish uh but you know when
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that happened I had not read wish and Shadow dark because why would I it's such a high level spell
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um have you per chance read wish in Shadow dark I have not my shadow dark
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games have only got up to like fifth level but I have my copy of Shadow dark right here but you have your copy open over I controller and it it it is of
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course it is very short uh tier five wizard duration instant range self uh
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this Mighty spell Alters reality make a single wish stating it as exactly as possible your wish occurs as interpreted
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by the GM treat a failed spellcasting check for this spell as a critical failure and roll the mishap with
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disadvantage done cool and that is it and so yeah I was just blown away I'm
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like Kelsey is just not afraid here she's like wish is wish and that's what
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it is yeah no and there's value there right I me that's kind of the challenge when you look at something like D and D where you do have this like big audience
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and there is a natural anxiety and you know how do you handle it but I think
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you know the I mean I I say I I much prefer Kelsey's approach like that's what it does why we trying to mess
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around with pretending it's not gonna do anything else the uh though I do think there's value in putting supplement Off
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cast etc etc but the um but it's funny you mentioned that it was a low-level Shadow Dark Adventure was that a
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published Adventure I imagine because you men I want to say it was in uh I I foret I think it might no it wasn't in
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the quick start Kelsey put together like 10 two or three three page dungeons or
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something like that oh okay so one of the mini ones yeah yeah yeah it was one of those mini dungeons um an aquatic
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themed one and it was in there so and it's funny so I mentioned I had like
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some curveballs I can't remember if we got that in recording but I have two curve balls to throw at you now this or at least maybe interesting things so a
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going way back into the Wayback machine letting the ancient hard dis like move its arm over and actually physically access the memory originally for the
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2014 DMG we were going to include an adventure and we're also going to include the a small like sample starting
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town and I think it was going to be the town from Under ilar the old like you
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know mid late 80s adventure and I can't remember the name of it I think it's
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daggerdale because I think or something Dale because it wasn't in the DS it always confused me like wait so the town
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is called like Riverdale it's in the dands no it's not the D it's over here so I think it's near Cormier or something anyways I always always threw
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me off and uh James Wyatt was going to write it and he had the great idea of the final treasure in the dungeon
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this little dungeon go through you know that outside of town would be a ring of three wishes with one wish left and I
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love that I I don't think there's any better way to introduce someone the dragons I said well here's a wish what do you do it it's like you know now we
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ended up getting it ended up getting cut because the starter set was coming out first and that was really seen as like
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okay this is where we want you to start the quarter books really reference uh no rational person who wants to learn a
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game is going to buy a 400 page 300 Page book and try to read it all I mean people do that but like you know most
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people don't so don't worry about putting a a starter dungeon or something in there because they'll just go use the
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starter set and it also meant it was clearer like what should I start with the starter set if the DMG had a starter thing it just I think be confusing to
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people so the uh but yeah because I think that is something about role playing games that it really highlights
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what makes these games different except I have like my my second little spin on things so I was
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thinking about that right because you'd think hey wish right like like your ex so was you were running the game and the
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player said I want to destroy everything in the d y I was running the game and like I don't I I hesitate to say we were
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running a campaign it was a series of linked one shots they were like Serpent cultists and you know like he could have
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been like I become the serpent God and i' be like okay fine this is you know not like this is not my dream campaign
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that I've been like cooking up for 5 years we can blow it all up tonight and it's fine uh but he was responsible and
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you know it was like 9:00 already anyway so it's like all right you blow up the dungeon great but that that is the answer to your question
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sorry so I was messing around I thought okay so is wish something that only like a human could handle like okay I C wish
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you need another person across the table so then I went I ask chat G
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PT and it's kind of interesting not to go completely but I guess maybe this falls into be careful what you wish for
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but it was really fascinating having it like not only did it totally understand the context like oh a Dungeons and Dragons game with the wish spell
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yes I will have it gave me like four or five different ideas for the wish I think the
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wish I said was oh my players wished for a million XP so what should I do in a way that's gonna be fun and creative
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came with five different different things then it said hey be be careful and then it asked me a question it's
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like what are your players like because that would help me give you a good answer and this is I'm like wow it's
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really interesting how they're feeding more more dat this the uh but I just thought that was kind of funny because my entire thing was like oh surely like
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only a human could adjudicate this like well yeah probably human only really still could but it is interesting to see
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where AI is going and it it contextually someone spent a lot of money for this
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giant thing to process enough Dungeons and Dragons like actual plays texts that
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like oh yeah I totally got the idea of someone casting wish in a tabletop role playing game and could contextualize and answer that question which just kind of
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B blew my mind do you have uh chat PT open when you're running game no uh I do
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not the um so I am very not listen to an entire episode what AI uh I use it for
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one very specific purpose I will open it up and I used to have a paid account when I worked at Wizards because we're
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doing a lot of research R um and the um what I will do with it is say hey chat
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gbt I let's say I'm working on a monster and I'll say hey I am working on a new monster and here are the adjectives I'm
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I'm using to describe it what kind of monster do you think this is so basically doing a like I know about the
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technology you're like hey when I put those words in it's going to go off and this basically giant cloud of Concepts
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and then find what's close to it so then if it comes back with something that doesn't match at all what I'm trying to describe I know to go back and change it
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but like during the game no because honestly um I actually had very far field here Ben if I start wandering too
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far off like the task just smack me but the um when I was at Wizards I was
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approached by someone who was it someone on the business side and they were like hey if we wanted to do like uh Lego
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Style toys for D and and this was this was like a year I think a little bit before they they they figured out they
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did the partnership with Lego Lego but they asked like why don't more people use Legos why don't more people use
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Dwarven Forge you know in their games and a lot of was because well the core gameplay Loop doesn't have space for it
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in the sense that hey weol initiative great we're about to get into a fight this is going to be fun but first let me build a 3D like you
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know it can work but you got to really think about it and so for me that's where chat GG kind of sits because like
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there is a funny thing where like this is kind of interesting it can generate all this text talking about wishes but like I'm if we're playing a game and I'm
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like oh that's interesting give me a moment just looking at my screen reading like the uh yeah the so that for me is
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it's not something that I really think of is as like a runtime research piece like it's more useful to me to get like
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what would the what would Reddit say if I asked Reddit hey I described the monster like this now everyone post what you think I'm describing the uh that's
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fundamentally what you're getting you talk to chat to chat gbt when I was running my one ring game
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I found it really useful because have you read the rules for one ring you know I did ages ago but it's been a while I
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just recently looked at the travel rules and I looked at the those the 5e version I don't think it's I don't think it
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works 55 it works with five that they're selling a d gun so the travel rules are
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exactly where I was going you know like incidents will happen along the way and in the in the core book they kind of
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have a generic like here are the like seven sorts of incidents that might happen and you know they're trying to
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give you enough inspiration to to run with it but also leave it open enough
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that you're not having the same thing happen all the time and uh you know after a few months it's like I could
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really use some fresh ideas here and and chat GPT was really handy for that um
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essentially generating like Random Encounters as you're going through the Wilderness and I I also use it similar
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with your monster idea um again I could be like hey give me uh tolken esque
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synonyms for whatever you know so and and I don't need to read a whole thing it's just like okay I can sprinkle in
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again the appropriate adjectives to kind of get me in that tolk in space but you know if I when I've been running Shadow
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dark like I I don't use it at all CU it's it's like well I kind of know what's going on here I know the score it's not quite the reach for my brain uh
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that tolken is but it was very good as a tolken uh emulator as I was running the
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One Ring no you I am not to derail this entire thing to let's talk about AI now
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but like I am surprised that like Dy Beyond doesn't have any sort of like
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chat gbt feature because even just in ter like you describing Random Encounters like to me that would seem to be perfect like yeah feed it all of my
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books and then I'm like hey the swamp make a random encounter for me based on like my own data right like I own the
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forgot round Source book and like these two monster manuals and all those monsters are tagged anyway so why not just tell me here's something that's in
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a swamp right like that yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they roll something out like that this year because it seems like it seems pretty especially with
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their virtual tabletop uh Maps like that seems like it would be pretty simple to
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just have a button that says make and counter right and it can just look at your characters like oh you have you know three fourth level characters
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here's a balanced fight you know great thank you right so yeah and AI is obviously controversial um and
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there's a lot of feelings swirling all around it I I guess I'm either apocalyptic or utopian depending on your
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point of view uh I think it's going to change everything very quickly uh and if
25:19
we manage it right it's going to be amazing I don't know that we're managing it right but uh I am like I've had a lot
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of people say it's expensive it consumes a lot of energy to reproduce
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a mediocre human and I'm like that might be so but that's today and like we went
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from uh the god image generation software I think called Dolly uh to you
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know AI generated movies that are pretty good in like two or three years you know
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this is going fast it's going fast and I think it reminds me a lot of the 90s where the vibe was oh um digital
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retailers will replace physical retailers and when you look at like like take Amazon as an example they just took
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the physical store and turned it into a digital catalog and like that obviously
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like worked to some extent but I still think like most retail sales like 60 to 70% are still you know face to face um
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and when you look at like what is Amazon today well Amazon was an online bookstore in 1999 today it is a provider
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of web hosting you know and business like you know it's it's it's uh AWS
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Amazon web services that like that's their big part of their business you know and streaming video and so I think
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what my personal feeling of AI is we're using it right now to just replace humans which is a dumb use of the
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technology because we already have people who can do this stuff we don't really gain anything by having AI do it
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I guess you could argue speed but what I'm waiting for which I think we'll see is like what is the AI equivalent of
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like uh uh door Dash or uh Uber right
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where it's it's like oh on my phone I can just say I need to ride somewhere and I hit a button and a car shows up in three minutes and drives me that place
27:05
you know and you know things like that where it's like you know or GPS in your phone where it is like actually
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transformational and like that thing literally just didn't exist or like the convenience is just so different than what you get from a taxi service right
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it's just there's no comparison like this thing wouldn't exist without this technology it's not just you know a
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digital catalog yeah and again I am not a computer science guy I am a science fiction guy
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though so and again as a teacher it's difficult because um you know for a
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while it's been like well we're preparing kids for a future we can't quite see and now it's like well I don't
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quite know what high school is going to be like for you guys sorry I I hope yeah I hope there's dates still I hope you
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still can go on dates uh and that somehow we don't ruin that for you uh
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but yeah um okay but yeah we have indeed wandered far a field uh so let let me ask you
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this then so James Wyatt is probably the most
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significant DND creator that I have not spoken to and don't know that I'm going
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to get to speak to so and for those of you who don't know he he is to this day
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at Wizards of the Coast he has been there for a long time uh yeah gosh he
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started in the Third Edition I want to say he was actually hired by so my understanding and uh is that he was
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hired by TSR then TSR couldn't bring him on because the entire bankruptcy thing uh
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but when Wizards bought you know finalized the purchase and then got everything settled out west he was like
28:47
one of the first people they reached out to to say hey now like you know come work at wizard so I think he always
28:52
worked at wizards but he was like technically hired by TSR that crazy
28:59
yeah so almost 30 years yeah and he worked on uh one of the fourth edition
29:05
core books I forget which uh he obviously worked on fifth edition and he's still there working on 2024 D and D
29:13
so this is a fasile question but what's what's Jim Wyatt like he's oh he's a he's a Methodist minister right he is
29:20
and you know I have not talked so he he he also he was one of the core three designers in fourth edition and uh he I
29:29
know after when we launched thei Edition like the success was pretty surprising we had to cut down the team but he ended
29:36
up over on Magic so he was on Magic from like 2015 to
29:41
2020 then came back I think in time like I think I don't know if he was part of the Court team working on on five5 I I
29:48
just call five5 because I just don't the sentences the um so the uh because they
29:54
have not given us anything to call it so but the um but yeah you know he well I mean I think
30:00
example like gave he was like he had the idea of like let's put a wish in the first dungeon that you go through right
30:06
like I think my impression of James is probably mostly shaped by Eon uh he
30:12
played a sign he was I don't I can't literally say he was like the Jeff grub
30:17
to Keith Baker's uh Ed Greenwood like I don't know enough about the process but
30:22
I know that like James has a very thoughtful approach to World building and
30:28
he has a very holistic view of the game which was interesting with fourth edition because he He's listed as one of
30:34
the core three designers and he did a ton of work on it but I always TR think how to put
30:40
this I always got the sense that his interest was more from the World
30:45
building standpoint rather than necessarily like the game design of like the powers and everything like that like
30:51
obviously he worked on that but there was also a significant thing of like what like the the world of the mentor
30:56
veale how does that together the um but yeah I mean in terms I mean you stick
31:02
around for that long at a company because they clearly like you and you're doing good work the uh but yeah actually
31:08
he's a very thoughtful person he isn't I can't remember him ever like rashly
31:13
saying something you know I'm just trying to go through and think because it's okay we're going back to like you could hear the the disc drive spinning
31:19
and everything this is not my modern solid state drive uh but yeah I think as
31:25
a designer if you just say hey James Wy has written Adventure what would I expect from it I think I would expect a
31:31
an adventure with that looks has a story in the sense there's like there's something going on between people it's
31:37
not just a location and you're gonna go kick in some doors and I think that that
31:43
story would be something that is I mean clearly you know character driven
31:48
characters that you're dealing with but there is a real sense of heroism within it like you are there maybe not to kill
31:54
someone but maybe to redeem them you know help them res Sol something the uh
32:01
yeah you know it is interesting because I'm trying to think if there was an adventure that he worked on that would be like oh yeah that was like James's uh
32:07
oh you know what city of the Spider Queen uh any award-winning Adventure that was I think that was like one of his signature works the uh on back in
32:14
the the three five days now and now maybe I'll look at up and be like oh this is nothing like it's just a big
32:20
murder Fest like a he's really a power gamer but you know I game with him and he always seemed to be like you know
32:25
more on the stories of cool um so can can can I just ask you some
32:31
questions since we we've wandered for field yeah we're super far and I don't know what you're going to title this
32:36
episode like again I it's it's I always think of it as we start with a text and we go from there and you know it's we're
32:42
not chained by it uh but again like you at least unless I misunderstand you have
32:48
not done a ton of media in the past 18 months uh no though I'm ramping up now
32:53
I'm actually back on social media I'm on X and uh it's been really fun it's like
32:58
oh yeah this is like it feel like I don't know what happened like it was super toxic for a very long time just
33:03
speaking my my own experience I have a very different experience on social media compared other people because of my profile you know people who I am uh
33:10
but it's been really fun and it's been very fun to just bounce ideas you know I G part of it two is like you know I've
33:16
been tracking five five in its release you know and trying to see like what's kind of going on like gaming as a whole
33:23
is a super weird place right now where and if I had summarize it based on what
33:28
I've seen so far people made a lot of plans in 2020 by taking the World As We
33:34
Knew It In Like September 2020 and looking at those Trends and there's drawing a very long line that assume
33:41
those Trends will just keep going on forever and they were right for about 14 months and then things changed radically
33:48
but the nature of game Dead is now all these games coming out are games that were kind of created with like oh this is how people will want to consume
33:55
here's the games people want and what they'll want to see games about and so I think there's a very interesting place
34:00
where there is just a huge mismatch right now between what people are making and what people want to consume and I
34:05
don't know if that has really ever happened before in Nas Market entertainment the uh yeah so yeah so
34:12
fire away well since you brought up X um and your return to it uh I'll ask about
34:18
your departure from it and say uh for three years people were like Mike Merles
34:24
was fired from DND in some way shape or form so were you fired from DND D I was
34:29
not fired from d and d and so you know I don't want to go into too many details everything that happened back then because it's just like oh you know what
34:35
that was like four or five years ago but no the uh so it was actually kind of interesting and I wonder if part of my social media thing is a lot of the
34:42
people who like really latched on to that and all this weird conspiracy theory like I don't know like maybe
34:49
they're all on some other social network now or something like that or it's just like isn't as interesting if the guy isn't worrying on but no no I I left the
34:55
um you I don't want to get into like you know the and there's not really any great details but the uh no I moved over to to Magic the Gathering I had the
35:01
chance to work on Magic I'd been working on some digital tools for D and uh I I
35:06
had and I know there was this thing where someone publicly said I was no longer working on D and that's like no
35:12
that never happened I have no idea why that happened but I'm not even GNA touch that the um but the I was working on
35:18
digital tools and then the company was looking at like what do we want to do with digit what's our next step forward
35:25
uh I was in favor of a very DM Centric approach uh let's make tools for DMS we have D andd Beyond that's great for
35:31
players but I want tools that will make running D andd faster and easier for me
35:37
uh and you know and it was kind of the decision of like which direction we want to go the company didn't want to go in
35:42
that direction so it's like I'm not really interested in working on something that's like so far from what I want to work on uh and that's why I got
35:48
the job offered to G work on Magic so the um yeah the um so that was not like
35:54
no at no point to be clear if like a quarter of what people talked
36:01
about had happened I would not have kept my job like it was but you know that's
36:06
kind of part I don't really even know what people think like happen any but yeah no that that was never even close
36:12
to coming up being untable so so obviously you were not working on D and
36:17
D at the time but what was the atmosphere within the company during
36:22
during the whole ogl Fiasco like what was it like within the walls of wizards oh people took it very very seriously
36:30
you know and you know I think when people released I don't know if anyone at Wizards ever has publicly said
36:36
anything or talked about it I think it was genuinely surprising to people and
36:42
and I'm gonna be in the weird position of like oh this company laid me off but I'm gonna kind of defend them now like
36:48
one of the things I do feel bad with people who got CAU up in it you know who aren't Wizards was they probably thought
36:53
hey we're doing exactly what the community would want us to do we have some ideas for how we want change it I am sure like at this stage remember it's
37:00
2020 um the business is blowing up there's a lot of potential for licensing
37:05
right like and it's going to be hard to negotiate a license with someone if they're like oh we don't actually need
37:10
to work with you we can get everything you have by just going and using this open G license and if you look back you
37:16
know the the things they were looking at were uh you know if you're making X dollars or more you have to give us
37:22
royalties etc etc etc that to me feels like those are terms were coming out of a place of we don't want like lucasfilm
37:30
showing up and doing a Star Wars D and D game and just you know selling bajillion copies because like they could all Li
37:36
this but just decided not to because the system's free now there's a lot of reasons why I think they they misread the situation but I think the one thing
37:43
I think people you know have to give a little maybe consideration is they were
37:48
sending out the license to people with this idea of getting feedback on now you could argue that no one took them seriously and thought no this is just
37:54
you sending this to me and you're going to ignore my feedback but like that to me doesn't kind of make
38:00
sense because if I was in I don't know I'm just going to say if I was in that position of like hey I think people going to hate this so
38:05
much and I'm gonna do it anyway why would I show it to people early because then the story is just
38:12
going to be like hey this thing is so bad we hated by the way they showed it to us and ignored us like that makes it even worse I mean I I will I will say
38:18
the sources I've had within Wizards seem sincere when they say yeah we send it out for feedback and then someone
38:24
stabbed Us in the face because again from from from within Wiz that is the point of view right like you just sent
38:30
this thing out for feedback and now it's all over the Internet and everyone is angry and one of the people that you
38:35
trusted to look at this and negotiate with you say stabbed you in the face and uh again I can understand that point of
38:44
view uh but I I will say though there is something he said for I think the one
38:49
thing they didn't quite account for because this would have been 2022 is when they're sending stuff out and had
38:55
they announced the new addition yet I think 55 had been announced yeah they they announced it I want to say around
39:00
August and then December they sent out OG we got 1.0a I think it's 1.0a um for
39:09
feedback and then by the within a week of the New Year within a week of the New Year Lin codega was uh writing articles
39:16
about it yeah and I think that's what their their miscalculation was you know there's a a lot of people like me who
39:23
worked on fourth edition you may have heard this be talked to them about hey why did fourth edition you know have so
39:28
much trouble and ultimately like almost wreck the business the um and it just
39:34
tried to changeed too much at once it was a new world it was a new game mechanic forgot Realms got radically
39:40
changed the novel line was like really paired down digital tools right it's just so much change it's like what what
39:46
am I supposed to how am I supposed to make this journey from where I was to where I am to where we're going and I think that was maybe their big
39:52
miscalculation was I I think it's it it is like almost like the same root cause maybe like as like oh we don't really
39:59
understand how people will look at this so we're going to show it to them but not knowing they'll think like no people
40:04
are going to be very on edge about this and very like no this is a direct threat you know you trying to be as nice as
40:10
possible because to put it in context maybe maybe Wizards didn't see you just
40:16
announced a new edition so people are immediately going back to fourth edition and the GSL and they're immediately
40:22
going back to to an a space of you are trying to do a new version of D and D
40:28
that can cut us out so this doesn't feel like hey can you give us feedback it felt more like this is the deal take it
40:34
or not can you for the audience that doesn't know what was the GSL so the GSL
40:40
was so we have the ogl for Third Edition and uh the company did not want to do the ogl for fourth edition and again
40:46
this is another example of just like of all the path this was the worst um ra and I think businesses do this all the
40:53
time and it driving banana um so they didn't want want to do the ogl performance for reasons right uh it's
41:00
competition blah blah blah blah blah so rather just say hey there's no gaming license which I think would have been a
41:05
much better approach people would have just said like okay like that's I'm upset but like that's it they had the
41:11
GSL and the GSL is basically like imagine if you took the ogl and said what are things we could put in this to
41:17
make it so that no one would ever use it because it's so obviously a bad deal and
41:22
then like double that now that's the GSL like it was so obviously like no why would anyone do this this feels like
41:28
you're actively stabbing Us in the face and so I think it had a similar thing of like oh they clearly didn't want any
41:34
competition for their products and so therefore they didn't actually want anyone to make stuff for it so they
41:41
offered such a horrible deal that no one would take them up on it and I think very few people did like you had to like
41:47
register your company with wizards they could like revoke it at any time you had to like send in all it was just super
41:53
fiddly and it would have been just much cleaner to just say no there's no ogl and it's kind of thing where like you
41:59
need to be in touch with the audience enough to know like Hey we're we're doing this because people will be really
42:04
upset we don't have the ogl but we don't want to do the ogl like as soon as you're in having that conversation you
42:09
need to step back go why are we getting rid of the ogl again or whatever the decision is like if we're gonna do all
42:15
jump through all these hoops to like make it look like we're not doing the thing we're doing like just do the thing right or just don't do the thing that's
42:21
the even better answer just don't right like hoy that people yeah uh yeah so
42:30
yeah I mean I guess that's long and short of it is like yeah I feel bad to people who got stuck in that situation because I just think they weren't quite
42:36
they didn't have the right context to understand the reaction and it's the worst outcome like you think you're
42:41
being reasonable so then when the other people people react you think maybe they're are they being unreasonable are the children wrong and this is a case
42:48
where I mean no the children were not wrong and to Wizard's credit like they
42:54
then made like they released the game under the um Whata call license now Creative Commons Creative Commons which
42:59
is like okay now they have no control over it and then five5 came out in like sort of change things like but I think
43:07
you could just make stuff for it using the current 5e thing I think people understand how to use it like it's it's
43:13
a super yeah so then it makes even the decision to like crack down even more like okay I don't know why like like I
43:20
said I think it's just purely from like this doesn't make any sense from a licensing standpoint so you know I think if you just look at it from that point
43:26
it makes total sense challenges finding the context the the story I've heard is
43:33
um that there was a French video game called H solasta crown of the magistar
43:39
or I might even be saying it wrong yeah that that was a real turning point for Chris Cox um
43:49
because again for those of you who don't know and I didn't know until I was told about it uh it's a French video game
43:54
that used fifth edition as its end um and it was it was D and like all the
44:01
uh press was this is the best DND video game ever made and it's not DN D um and
44:08
it I I've not played it but it seemed to do very well it made a bunch of money um
44:14
and somebody told me that there was a license involved at some point but I have not gotten the full story on that
44:20
yet yeah I think it was so at one point I was asked to play it the um I'm
44:26
looking it up on steam right now and so like it's alltime reviews has got 17,000
44:31
reviews total which is pretty good right but it's not like I mean let's compare that
44:37
like I mean now obviously I'm comparing a game of the year but you know 177,000
44:42
reviews compared to 637000 reviews for pg3 it's funny
44:48
because it's one of those things where again you think of context right like so
44:53
okay this this is like very convenient because this is this is what you get to hear my theory theory of like why ttrpgs
44:59
don't scale so the uh I have this Theory what do you mean by don't scale here
45:05
yeah it's a business thing so the uh man I hope this makes sense because we're using your air time if this ends up
45:11
being stupid no this is this is great this is this is the way the conversation goes so the so I have this Theory before
45:18
we start recording let me rewind a little bit I I I I told you that I think one of the big flaws of ttrpgs is that
45:23
everyone wants to pretend they're this super bespoke weirdo unique business that like is so different from anything
45:29
else that you like cannot possibly take learnings from other areas and bring it to Paar and that is just so completely
45:37
wrong right like in the example I gave when we were talking is like oh people look at RPGs like only the dungeon
45:42
master buys anything you can play D and D or vampire with only one person buying
45:47
anything and that's so weird and how do we solve that it's like that makes no sense when I play Settlers of Katan we
45:54
don't all show up with our settlers boxes like one person brings a copy of settlers and what settlers doesn't do
46:01
what RPGs try to do is say hey we'll sell stuff to the players to the other
46:07
players which like if you apply that to settlers or almost any other game you have this weird thing we're like we're
46:14
say sitting down to play sers and our host say Ben you're our host you pull out your set and then I from my backpack
46:20
pull out my oh I bought the armies expansion I can build armies now and attack you guys I mean you can't because
46:27
you didn't buy the expansion but I did like I can't imagine any s scenario where people like oh that's cool a we're
46:33
GNA let you do that no they'd be weird not buy it and then B think oh these set Katan people they're such great you know
46:39
business feel like isn't it so great they're making stuff where you could just buy to be better it's fundamentally what you're like saying like yeah I
46:45
bought a book with a bunch of new spells and classes and stuff like it's obviously those are gonna be more powerful I mean I've been in this
46:51
business for almost 30 years like that's what happens right but we think that that makes sense and like no makes sense
46:57
only in role playing games no one else would run their business that way and so but there is one thing that I think role
47:03
playing games share with very high-end professional software like specifically
47:09
like like like Unix distributions or like very like you like the the the software Machinery you sell to design
47:16
chips you know like I'm Gonna Make You Know design the next chip you know you it's gonna power the next generation of AI stuff where the distance between the
47:25
customer and the person making decisions about the product at an executive level
47:30
has to be as short as possible because your user is an expert like so Dungeons and Dragons is a
47:37
dungeon master they're going to use these tools or any role playing game to make content they are creating content
47:44
you really need to know what's valuable to them to make a product that they're going to use because they're going to develop their way of working and they
47:50
are not going to like change how they do things in order to accept your product into their like work Loop you know and
47:57
that's I think is the key to role playing games where other products other games don't have that super short walk
48:04
like you you must have executive you know decision-making as close to the customer as possible because the games
48:12
the the active creation is not quite so fundamental to everything uh Magic
48:18
Gathering I think is a good example like you make decks but you don't make cards right so you can afford to have a little
48:24
bit more space there uh because not so onet to one like I have to really know the customer they're going to make great
48:30
cards in the set no they're GNA make great decks much more structured something on Extreme Edge right like you
48:36
know the milk you buy at your local grocery store I don't need any connection to that guy running that
48:41
business I just need to know that they are deciding to keep you know the milk is clean and it's a good price right really
48:48
the only thing the only way that they in an executive can communicate with me meaningfully is price right now they
48:54
again there could be the bad communication of oh this is you know infested with bacteria okay no thank you
48:59
the um but ideally there is no communication there because I'm not worried about buying you know spoiled milk in my my my little store I'm just
49:05
looking like I just went and bought milk today and my choice was driven by cost my wife needed some milk because she's
49:10
making some uh making some cupcakes and so I just said you know what here's how much she needs here is the cheapest
49:16
version of that amount she needs um but that's not RP people don't go people
49:21
don't go don't go to your local game store and say hey what's the cheapest role playing game that's the one I want right
49:28
that's not how they work at all you know they want to see something that speaks to them literally like you know they're
49:33
looking at the product going oh this is yeah I want to build stuff with this you know and uh to me that that's the thing
49:40
that doesn't scale up and so to look this all the way back around like the ogl and stuff I think that's where you run into trouble with any role play game
49:47
DD or otherwise you got decisions made about a role playing game the the information there lives in the edge
49:53
right it lives in the audience it is not do not exist anywhere else and so then you end up with someone
49:59
deciding let's get rid of the ogl because you know we're looking at the licensing business and we're not relying
50:04
on maybe the Frontline person who's like the community manager you know to like come in and weigh in and say hey here's
50:10
the strategy to make this work the um and so yeah that's what I think the real thing it reveals is you know and and
50:17
that that's my experience is the the games that do well we talk about Shadow dark earlier that game was 100% a
50:22
byproduct of Kelsey Dion's ability to build the community and to interact
50:28
uh and to be part of we're talking uh a week or so after Charlie Hall wrote the
50:33
uh it's time for Indie role playing game Publishers to get loud article um where
50:39
he really pointed out that DND D doesn't have a lot coming out after the the core
50:47
stuff comes out like there's the starter set and I want to gosh were there Adventures announced I don't even recall
50:52
yeah I think they have a collection of dragon based adventures coming out out in a few months or something like that I
50:59
me we're talking in January of 2025 so I think it's supposed to be for the spring April May is somewhere in there
51:06
okay oh I should ask five more minutes that okay five more minutes is great yeah that's perfect so I can go make dinner um and uh you know like Charlie
51:16
was was saying hey uh this is your chance uh smaller tabletop role playing
51:22
game Publishers although people some people really took issue with uh him talking about them getting loud uh again
51:29
I don't know if you saw this online but it can be very hard to be a ttrpg
51:34
producer who is not making DND uh living in a d and world and and saying hey come
51:40
come try my game uh so to see someone from polygon say well the problem is you
51:46
guys aren't loud a lot of people took that the wrong way but the thing I took from it was just that the uh Gap in D
51:54
and D's publishing schedule does represent a genuine opportunity for
51:59
Indie Publishers uh cuz it seems like when when uh I shouldn't say it seems
52:05
like when TSR wasn't making stuff in 1997 I got reports uh from the time
52:10
saying that all these other games they're sales shot up uh so if D and D is not producing things it it does
52:17
represent uh an opportunity to expand market share for other game designers
52:23
which I thought was interesting and So speaking of like you know uh the the distance from the uh uh
52:31
Market to those making decisions um all right what else do I want to ask you so
52:38
you actually want the thing with the the Charlie's article that I think is weird is that this is the same number of
52:46
releases that D&D has traditionally been delivering throughout fifth edition like this isn't weird to have this window my
52:52
theory is when you look at back of the ogl the real impact of it is that it
52:58
made D and D uncool again D and D was cool right you have like Joe manganello
53:03
and people like that like openly talking about playing D and D D and D was something that was kind of interesting
53:09
and creative and fun and different and I think what the ogl did was take that
53:17
concept that Wizards and this idea of creativity that is inherent in the D
53:22
andd brand because of it's It's a role playing game and I think those two two things were sundered and I don't know if
53:28
you could ever put them back together because I think essentially you know it's this phrase the Mandate of Heaven right I think fundamentally what
53:34
happened was Wizards has lost the Mandate of Heaven and I don't see them even trying to get it back because what
53:40
I find fascinating about the fact that it was Charlie Hall who wrote that is this is the same Charlie Hall who wrote
53:45
glowing reviews of the 5.54 books but then at the same time he also then writing this is your chance because D
53:52
and D seems to be stumbling like how do you square that how do I go out and a review like here's the new two Star Wars
53:57
movies they're the best amazing the greatest Star Wars movies ever made by the way Star Wars has never been weaker
54:03
now is there a chance other science fiction properties like so to me there is to me it's that context thing again
54:09
like maybe this is the best players handbook ever written but the Vibes the audience the people playing these games
54:16
they don't seem excited about it like we're not seeing a ground solo support and excitement and all these where are
54:22
the third party products that's my f pass because that's you think oh there's a gap I mean remember before the ogl
54:28
even came up back when 3 launched white wolf had a monster book there were multiple Adventures at Gen Con like the
54:35
license wasn't even official yet people they're already Adventure showing up in stores we're not seeing that what's
54:40
ostensibly like this is the new standard going forward if anything we're seeing the opposite creators are running in the opposite direction I mean that's where
54:46
I'm going like U you to plug my patreon patreon.com mik merals onew the um you
54:52
know this time last year when I was looking at like my post Wizards options I thought why maybe I could start doing fifth edition compatible stuff and now
54:59
what I'm finding is I just don't want to like it just seems boring it's just like
55:04
you know it's it's like trying to like you know start a hair metal band in 1992 it's like no no no it's everyone's mopy
55:13
and we're wearing flannel and it's Seattle and rain and we're like you know it's Nirvana now man it's not like poison like and I that's the vibe I get
55:21
right now it's just like yeah there's still you know poison was still releasing albums still selling probably like hundreds of thousands or a million
55:27
copies but they didn't have any of the energy you know like it's moved on but what's
55:32
been interesting to me is that that role play game culture is still there and this is what I find fascinating about gaming in general especially ttrpgs I
55:39
don't think we've ever had a a period where ttrpgs were flourishing and had a lot of energy and excitement around them
55:45
and d and d wasn't on the upswing because I do think that's what's happening now when very strange Waters
55:50
where I think D and D is now uncool uh and it's but it's not like the audience is shrinking as opposed to like
55:56
you know a friend of mine would use the example the late 90s when TSR was really struggling you know they got bought up
56:02
and I think back then D andd wasn't very cool either the uh but it was taking down the entire industry with it like
56:09
yes shadon are the games who were getting market share that overall Pi was shrinking you trading card games were taking off video games are becoming
56:15
better than ever um but yeah I think this is a weird weird space we in now where in 2024 will be the first time in
56:24
the history of role play games a new addition D and D launched and I would
56:29
put good money down on the table that Brandon sanderson's role playing game
56:35
generated more Revenue than the new edition cors how much did his role playing game
56:42
make I'm gonna looked at it right now because I said that I'm like I God I hope I didn't just like 5 okay then I'm
56:48
clearly wrong the um well as long as we're whipping out numbers I will uh so uh for the I am
56:57
digitizing my entire historical archive and I am uh posting one document per
57:04
week on the show Discord for patreon subscribers so uh if if you want access
57:11
to uh historical documents like like the one I'm about to cite it's only three bucks a month and I don't think I'm ever
57:17
going to change it I'm just going to make those three bucks uh so amazing that you have to come and give them to
57:22
me but in 1994 uh TSR made a total
57:29
of uh $6 million on hardback books and
57:34
hardbound rules and only 1.5 million on modules so and again if you take that
57:42
you you you change it for today it doesn't seem like a ton of money to a
57:47
billion dollar Corporation and even if uh 2024 D and is doing really really
57:53
well like you know what 10 million $20 million you think like how much did
57:58
Brandon Sanderson bring in yeah so the the Cosby role playing game Kickstarter um brought in over $50
58:05
million um the if so the now this get where things get really interesting
58:11
because if you were to look at your 5.5 cor books this where I kind of fun I got to do this for a job because I learned
58:17
all this stuff very I'm amazing at parties people just can't stop inviting me over no it's the
58:23
I got a copy here of the dungeon master guide and I think the most telling thing about this in terms of the business is uh is the words printed in the
58:31
USA they printed this book in the United States I'm going to tell you as someone who works in role playing games that you only do that if you absolutely must
58:37
because your schedule has been completely shredded because you are paying way more money to ship in the states like don't even talk to me about
58:43
saving money on shipping it does not even close so you're printing in the states and you're charging 50 bucks so
58:50
I'm going to use that as my thing that even with those numbers like $15 million assuming you're selling either through
58:56
distribution or you're selling a digital copy now they have they did sell copies direct so you know actually go back
59:02
Andress my math very arbitrarily here to a little bit higher number per unit but that's kind of bad for them it means
59:08
they've sold well it means they have to sell fewer but so $15 million let's say they're getting an average of I'm G say
59:14
$30 per cor book sold they've sold theyve released the dungeon Masters Guide and the player
59:20
handbook divide that by 30 but have to Sol half a million books total
59:27
I you know and I think just looking at the numbers on um you know amazon.com oh so and you I don't think they're coming
59:33
close to that yeah I think they're about half that probably well and they uh they
59:39
said they they they said it's amazing that it's sold more than anything ever
59:45
again I'm I'm what did they say ah so this is the thing they did not say that
59:50
they said they it well they Ed the word fastest fastest stld oh but they also said specifically this is our largest
59:57
first print run which implies there have been D andd print runs that were larger
1:00:03
that just weren't first print runs they've also been using oh God I feel bad I don't mean to roast people I used
1:00:09
to here we are Mike you're doing it the the internet's gonna love it that's I'm a free agent now I just talk about this
1:00:15
no but if you look it is interesting to look at the way they talk about it I think there was a CNBC article and they
1:00:21
said something like uh the players's handbook has been like touched
1:00:26
by more players or has been delivered to more players or like the the the addition like they're very careful to
1:00:32
never just say it is the best selling thing ever and the I mean this working
1:00:37
in video games you see this a lot where people will say things like uh just today Electronic Arts had their um
1:00:43
earnings call and they said something like you know we have delivered 1.5 million copies of some game to fans it's
1:00:49
like oh that sounds impressive but you're think wait delivered it to fans so it's not sales they didn't say sell they said delivered so it could be
1:00:55
included like free downloads people getting it through a subscription service like you have Xbox live maybe it's available
1:01:01
there so you can't do a one for one and say that's sold and a lot of their comments have had that sort of phrasing
1:01:07
where it's like it's the fastest like well of course you had like you know four months of pre-orders you know they
1:01:13
keep referring to it beating 2014 it's like well who cares the market was a shadow of itself back in 2014 and
1:01:20
they're not just coming out saying it has sold more it's all these other words around it which then like people like me working the business well then I have to
1:01:26
go and you know go through their press releases and then triangulate things I'll give you another example they were
1:01:32
they at the end of the year and I do have to go into sex yeah and I'm like I said five minutes ago 10 minutes ago but
1:01:38
yeah 10es ago this interesting and my wife doesn't want to talk about this my daughter definitely talk about this it's
1:01:43
not work but they they pulled out a number at the end of last year and they said there were 3.6 million characters
1:01:50
made for D 5 which sounds pretty impressive right they launched the character builder in August so that's
1:01:55
what five months it's pretty good right so 3.6 million characters 720 720,000
1:02:02
characters Perth well I because the way I'm wired as my mom said to my wife
1:02:08
before we got married like he's a little odd need there just certain things you have to learn to deal with the um I
1:02:15
heard that number and immedately thought wait a second D beond back in in January 2020 publicly released how many
1:02:22
characters had been made on their service and so I spent you know other
1:02:28
people stay up late playing video games I stay up late like going through transcripts of YouTube videos and then
1:02:33
getting like lowkey on tilt at Adam Brad like he speaks so slowly like even on two times speed slow right it's my my
1:02:41
Northeastern New Englander thing kicking in um but yeah he said in January of
1:02:46
2020 that there had been 30 million characters created on D Beyond which is
1:02:51
well that's a lot and then you trace back and say how long had D Beyond been running at that point 30 months so
1:02:57
you're looking at a million characters per month and that's assuming hey some of those months were the launch month where like clearly they didn't just immediately go to a million so you look
1:03:03
and they say hey they're they're bragging about this number it's 720,000 characters per month which is you know
1:03:10
28% behind where they were preco when the service was just launching so like
1:03:16
what was that number like for December of 2019 it was probably higher than a million because that was not you know that butter was not just spread out
1:03:23
evenly so there's things like that you're like going okay so what's actually going on and this is you this is my theory of the case is just
1:03:30
like d andd just isn't cool right now people aren't like yeah give me D and D but I think they are saying yeah I like
1:03:36
roleplay games and where that's going to go you know the $5 million for Brandon Sanderson like that's wild right like he
1:03:44
could have done a lot of things and he chose to do a role playing game uh you know Matt kill's role playing game
1:03:49
breaking five million you know things like that um so yeah I think we are in I
1:03:55
don't want to get too optimistic but I think and by saying it aloud I'm going to jinx it you know like as every good
1:04:01
Superstition superstitious person thinks um we might be entering a post D and D
1:04:06
era you know D andd has always been like the number one game by far but I think
1:04:12
you could probably go back and look at 2024 and say D and D overall revenue for ttrpgs D and D was less than
1:04:19
half and I think I could make that case now that I'm saying I'm like maybe I should go trying to figure that out well
1:04:24
from from your mouth to St Cub's ears um I I I will close simply by saying uh
1:04:31
before 2024 D and D came out um I really tried to yell about the
1:04:37
fact that except for fifth edition every version of D and D did worse than the ones before it because uh you know again
1:04:45
I have a lot of respect for the creatives involved uh on 2024 d and d and I thought that these CEOs are just
1:04:53
going to roast them if it doesn't do better than d and d 5e and I'm like it's
1:04:58
almost imp it almost can't do better than D and D 5e because it was it sucked
1:05:04
all the oxygen out of the room my books are still good why do I need to buy this like it's just uh I just don't think
1:05:12
unless something extraordinary happens that it's going to be able to match the success of 5e in part simply because 5e
1:05:18
was so successful so I tried to get that idea out there in the hopes that somebody could take it to the CEOs and
1:05:24
be like look it wasn't us uh but you know think what we're talking about goes right back to what I was
1:05:29
saying earlier because when the distance between the customer and the decision maker gets to whatever the business is
1:05:34
there's just a certain it's like a law of physics this is how far you can be aart and still have a viable business
1:05:40
RPGs man like why was fifth edition so successful because not only were we super close to the customer like you
1:05:46
know Nathan Stewart literally is like on Reddit reading threads and hey I people are complaining about this right and
1:05:51
then when critical role came and said hey Nathan we want to stream the game he like sure right if that had gone through a
1:05:57
committee like like a year later they would said yes but the people making those decisions like Nathan like lose
1:06:03
Shu like myself you know Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford going to conventions taking notes and implementing it you
1:06:09
know when they got back to the office and uh I think that is something I noticed that that I'm back on social
1:06:15
media like I don't see any of the D and staff on social media and that is a that's kind of sad because I think that
1:06:20
was one thing that really helped t&b um and yeah so all right well you have to
1:06:26
make you have to make food so I'm gonna say thank you so much um great to talk
1:06:32
to you and uh have a great dinner yeah take care right by thank you bye bye all right and if you're still listening to
1:06:38
this I am here to tell you about our amazing patreon uh if you are a patreon
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subscriber uh you get access to a number of amazing perks uh firstly as I already
1:06:51
mentioned I am digitizing my entire historical document archive and posting
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1:07:03
historical documents from the past I think this is really cool hopefully those of you listening to this are also
1:07:09
fascinated to hear about things like the fact that uh uh in 1994 TSR sold a whole
1:07:16
a total of $126 worth of graphic novels in Canada
1:07:22
uh cuz that is how granular some of the information I'm posting up here is is going to be um in addition to that I
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have special patreon only episodes uh you can hear me and uh Dr Scott Bruner
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discuss the dungeon Masters Guide only by subscribing to our patreon uh I have
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also started booking guests for other special episodes uh in February I will
1:07:47
be talking with Ken height designer of kns black agents in the Dracula dossier
1:07:53
and Sandy Peterson designer of first edition kak cthulu uh I'm thinking of it
1:07:59
as a series I'm going to call designers on designers uh Ken said that uh kak
1:08:05
cthulu is his favorite game I'm like how how about I have Ken talk to Sandy Peterson about kak cthulu for an hour
1:08:11
and I record it uh they're both brilliant designers what what's that conversation going to be like I don't know but it's going to be fantastic I
1:08:18
bet and I'm going to record it and put it up only for patreon subscribers and all of that can be had for a mere $3 a
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month uh listeners our plan is to keep the $3 level the only level we want to
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make it so good that you feel like you have to give us three bucks a month so uh go follow the link in the show notes
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of you who are already patreon subscribers thank you so much for your support uh we couldn't do this without you and this was a fantastic convers
1:08:55
ation with Mike Merles I hope you all enjoyed it and it's very cold and dark where I am and I hope it's uh bright
1:09:02
light and warm where you are be well all
1:09:17
[Music]
1:09:25
0:12
aloud and I wanted to say a brief word before launching into Today's Show here
0:18
uh we take a ttrpg text and talk about it with a ttrpg luminary today you'll be
0:24
hearing my conversation with Mike Merles we start out discussing wish in Dungeons
0:29
and dragon reading the spell aloud and and then the conversation expands into Mike's time at
0:35
Wizards including why he left DND d uh but this is primarily a conversational
0:40
sort of hangout show uh with a text kind of like Bible study for D and D Fanatics
0:46
if you came here because of my clickbait title I just wanted you to know what you're listening to and tell you that we
0:52
do get to Mike's time at wizards but we kind of fell into it so uh with that explanation please enjoy tonight's
0:59
episode [Applause] Ben rigs presents reading DND D
1:10
[Music] aloud episode 39 why Mike Merles left
1:19
the [Music]
1:25
indeed ladies gentlemen boys girls uh uh Samurai shugenja Ronin welcome once
1:33
again to reading Dungeons and Dragons aloud I am apparently controversial DND
1:39
historian Ben rigs I will uh add to that uh so-called celebrity and Apprentice
1:45
demagogue um just I'm just you know taking notes on on on who I am here but
1:52
I am I am nothing compared to the man that I'm sharing this call with uh with me is D and D fifth edition lead
2:00
designer Mike mer hi Mike hello I will point out that you describe yourself as
2:06
The Apprentice demagogue and then said I don't know how I compare to this guy which implies that I might be a higher
2:11
level of demagogue which like I don't know if I'd argue with that because I was thinking the other day when I worked
2:17
on fifth edition there was a moment I was on Twitter and I realized people were actually listening to what I was saying and if you've ever seen the movie
2:24
the uh Naked Gun the original one oh yes there's a scene where Leslie Nelson's
2:29
character Frank uh I can't remember people's names who like it important business meetings but I can remember the names of like
2:34
characters in movies 4 years ago uh he dis he asked go to go undercover as an Umpire and he starts like he calls like
2:40
strike on a pitch and realizes that everyone in the stadium is watching him and he gets really into it every that's
2:46
how I kind of felt like being like when I was working on D and D being on Twitter like everyone's watching so
2:51
let's have some fun with it right like when I realized people were listening to me I was filled with Dawning
2:58
horror like I I can't say that you know it's funny like once once I was like oh people are
3:04
listening to me my my posting just shot down like oh crap um but again I think
3:11
that might also be a historian's Instinct of like well I kind of want it to be right and clean and and what I you
3:17
know I don't really want to shoot from the hip here what I what I say I want it to be uh uh what I really think and
3:24
meaningful I don't want to have to go and walk things back um even when I post things that turn out to be controversial
3:30
or I know are going to be controversial like um I I never go back and think to myself that's not what I meant or uh I
3:40
said it wrong in some way shape or form which is always my my great fear uh that I'm going to misspeak but
3:46
yeah thank God I'm not a politician all right so you are here to discuss wish uh
3:53
because I've had depending on how you count skip Williams I've had someone from every
3:59
Edition of D and on to talk about it so far except for Fifth and 24 D and so here
4:05
you are to to help me complete the circle of talking about wish uh for
4:12
hopefully my audience is like yay another hour about wish otherwise you know this may be a
4:18
real misbegotten Venture but I think it's fine uh so let me Begin by reading it out loud unless you want to say
4:23
something before I read it out loud no go for it and I think it's actually really interesting to look at wish as a
4:28
lens to get the the sense of like what is this game trying to do I do have to ask was was wish present in fourth
4:34
edition D and D I can't remember it was not that is I think how a designer
4:39
approaches a spell like wish tells you a lot about how that Designer is going to approach any role playing game but especially D drag well I had uh Jonathan
4:47
tweet and Rob uh hang on Hano oh isn't it
4:54
Hano say so I say Hino I have no IDE so uh again having them on to talk about it
4:59
was absolutely fascinating because of course uh well and what I found is first through Third Wish kept getting more and
5:07
more nerfed I would say um and then fourth it didn't exist at all and I have no idea what it says here in fifth so
5:14
we're we're going to have to see yes let find out all right uh and I should ask
5:19
who do you know who wrote this specifically about the spell that's
5:24
a great question probably Rob schwald I you know this is like going back to the
5:30
ancient data banks like you know it's before we had the super fast drives we have now it's like an actual physical
5:37
arm it's such a pesty question I'm asking about one piece of text in the book that all these people worked on but
5:42
but but this is the thing Ben you gotta understand at one point in my life that was the most important question you could ask me because we had to get this
5:49
thing shipped so if you would ask me hey who's writing wish and I said I don't know it meant no one was writing it and we were in trouble because I was only
5:55
getting asked that question if we needed it for the book so but I'm pretty sure Rob Schwab
6:01
tanked the uh spell chapter I know there are some spells that got in there that I wrote uh but I'm pretty sure Rob took on
6:08
the Lion's uh share of that work cool and for for listeners that's uh Rob Schwab of sh of the Demon Lord and
6:16
Shadow the weird wizard which I I hear are both excellent so AEM wish ninth
6:22
level conjuration casting time one action range self components verbal
6:27
duration instantaneous uh wish is the mightiest spell a mortal
6:33
creature can cast by simply speaking aloud you can alter the very foundations
6:39
of reality in accord with your desires the basic use of this spell is to
6:44
duplicate any other spell of eighth level or lower you don't need to meet any requirements in that Spell including
6:51
costly components this the spell simply takes effect alternately you can create
6:59
one of the following effects of your choice you create one object of up to
7:06
25,000 gold pieces in value that isn't a magic item the object can be no more
7:12
than 300 ft in any Dimension and it appears in an unoccupied space you can
7:18
see on the ground you allow up to 20 creatures that you can see to regain all
7:24
hit points and you end all effects on them described in the greater restoration SP spell you grant up to 10
7:32
creatures that you can see resistance to a damage type you choose you grant up to
7:38
10 creatures you can see immunity to a single spell or other magical effect for
7:43
eight hours for instance you could make yourself and all your companions immune
7:50
to El's life drain attack you undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll
7:57
of any roll made within the last round including your last turn reality
8:02
reshapes itself to accommodate the new result for example A Wish spell could
8:08
undo an opponent's successful save a fo's critical hit or a friend's failed save you can force the reroll to be made
8:15
with advantage or disadvantage and you can choose whether to use the reroll or
8:21
original roll and there's a couple paragraphs left but I want to pause there for a second because uh that last
8:26
bit there is is brought in from Third Edition because apparently Peter
8:31
adkinson had a game go really South with a uh wish that Miss messed with time
8:37
somehow so Peter was very insistent that wish not be able to mess with history
8:44
and uh skip Williams as I recall and Jonathan were both kind of like uh but
8:50
they were like well we gotta appease the boss so this is going in there so you know if you're going to go back in time it's only for one role and it's it's
8:57
interesting to me that that that piece is still there you know in fifth edition
9:03
cuz it's just such a specific like uh you know here here you are dming and
9:09
this one thing happens and you're like we got to change the rules so that can never happen to anyone ever again and
9:14
it's still in here you know all these all this time later all right I'm Gonna Keep Going list you want to say
9:20
something want to thr one one of the things I love about that is just the the butterfly effect of you know I imagine
9:26
it was probably a game from the 80s or something you know and just to like just to lean in if you could just send like a
9:31
message back to that group like what you have done will change like 25 years of D&D history like what did we
9:42
do dude you ruined it for everyone forever I shouldn't say that it's it's
9:48
fine it's a fine rule um okay you might be able to achieve something beyond the
9:53
scope of the above examples State your wish to the dungeon master as precisely
9:58
as possible the DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance the greater
10:04
the wish the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong the spell might simply fail the effect you desire might
10:12
only be partly achieved or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a
10:17
result of how you worded the wish for example wishing that a villain were dead
10:22
might Propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive effectively removing you from the
10:29
game similarly wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the
10:36
item's current owner and I think this is getting again as we're reading this I'm like this might be word for word from
10:41
Third Edition um it's so as you're reading I'm reading along the 5.5 players handbook and it is this text is
10:48
exactly carried over oh wow I also found that kind of interesting all right one paragraph left
10:54
the stress of casting this spell to produce any effect other than duplicating another spell weakens you
11:01
after enduring that stress each time you cast a spell until you finish a long rest you take 1 d10 necrotic damage per
11:09
level of that spell this damage can't be reduced or prevented in any way in
11:14
addition your strength drops to three if it isn't three or lower already for 2D four days for each of those days that
11:22
you spend resting and doing nothing more than light activity your remaining recovery time decreases by two days
11:29
finally there is a 33% chance that you are unable to cast wish ever again if
11:35
you suffer this stress that last paragraph I'm not sure about that might be new but but the rest of it sounds
11:41
pretty close to what was in 3.5 and it was it's identical to what's in
11:46
5.5 just about so 5.5 not to be the guy who's like making
11:51
fun of the you know the game that came after his version of the game but it it they threw in this extra few sentences that kind of like that had this very D
11:59
and specific like or about like what happens if you make a wish that affects the plcape the city because I yeah so it
12:08
kind of comes across as almost like hey make sure we own this so but I don't know maybe they thought it was important
12:14
to specifically say you can't mess with the lady of pain with wish so the um I just think it's kind of funny because I
12:20
think a lot of players will read this and they won't have they'll have no idea what that is so the U but yeah the I I
12:26
think that final paragraph Was new because I think we were thinking through this idea that we should have some sort
12:32
of cost associated with it specifically so that we could deal with like those
12:38
specific effects like know heal everyone up and so on we kind of knew that this would essentially let let the wizard do
12:44
anything and uh we could step on the character's toes so if you were like well I'll I'll I'll cast wish all the
12:51
time using these like guard railed you know options because those are balanced so I can just keep casting
12:57
it well then therefore just kind of making everyone else feel sad because you just got this kind of not an ey win
13:02
button because you know they're very specifically focused on certain things but that you know that it would just get
13:09
obnoxious after a while and we decided to include that because there's there's a funny thing that happened one of the
13:14
biggest lessons I learned his um game balance that looks like it's just there for the purpose of
13:19
game balance like the players will naturally push back at it but if you put game balance in there and say oh this is
13:26
this way because a wizard did it and they go oh okay okay it was it so now we 100% accept that that is normal and of
13:32
course we should be really careful casting wish because maybe we can't ever cast it again instead of you know the
13:37
reaction of like oh this is this is lame they're just doing this for balance purposes boring right like so now it's like oh yes it's so but I think there's
13:43
power there it's such a powerful spell it is it's a ninth level it's really kind of a 10th LEL spell right like it's
13:50
better than the other the other spells you can get at Ninth level so this is just a natural way to kind of give you
13:55
the effect of I can cast wish that's so cool but then say yeah but be careful with it don't like it also kind of
14:01
undermines things in terms of like a storytelling it's like oh every high high Lev wizard is just running around casting wish all the time so did want to
14:09
make it feel like it was a big moment in the campaign if a wizard took the spell and cast it and also for an NPC same
14:15
thing you just wouldn't design encounters with an evil wizard just casting wish all the time so huh well
14:22
it's like um when when I started this process uh
14:28
it was because uh I want to say wish popped into like a second or third level
14:33
Shadow Dark Adventure and again I audience you know
14:39
this story and audience you've you've heard me read wish from Shadow dark before but I'll do it again just for consistency here um you know uh a
14:46
charact like I want to say you put a a ruby into a statue's hand and you got to cast one wish spell and the character
14:53
decided to like basically blow up the dungeon they were in which it's not a bad use of wish uh but you know when
15:00
that happened I had not read wish and Shadow dark because why would I it's such a high level spell
15:05
um have you per chance read wish in Shadow dark I have not my shadow dark
15:11
games have only got up to like fifth level but I have my copy of Shadow dark right here but you have your copy open over I controller and it it it is of
15:18
course it is very short uh tier five wizard duration instant range self uh
15:23
this Mighty spell Alters reality make a single wish stating it as exactly as possible your wish occurs as interpreted
15:31
by the GM treat a failed spellcasting check for this spell as a critical failure and roll the mishap with
15:37
disadvantage done cool and that is it and so yeah I was just blown away I'm
15:43
like Kelsey is just not afraid here she's like wish is wish and that's what
15:48
it is yeah no and there's value there right I me that's kind of the challenge when you look at something like D and D where you do have this like big audience
15:56
and there is a natural anxiety and you know how do you handle it but I think
16:01
you know the I mean I I say I I much prefer Kelsey's approach like that's what it does why we trying to mess
16:07
around with pretending it's not gonna do anything else the uh though I do think there's value in putting supplement Off
16:13
cast etc etc but the um but it's funny you mentioned that it was a low-level Shadow Dark Adventure was that a
16:18
published Adventure I imagine because you men I want to say it was in uh I I foret I think it might no it wasn't in
16:24
the quick start Kelsey put together like 10 two or three three page dungeons or
16:29
something like that oh okay so one of the mini ones yeah yeah yeah it was one of those mini dungeons um an aquatic
16:35
themed one and it was in there so and it's funny so I mentioned I had like
16:40
some curveballs I can't remember if we got that in recording but I have two curve balls to throw at you now this or at least maybe interesting things so a
16:47
going way back into the Wayback machine letting the ancient hard dis like move its arm over and actually physically access the memory originally for the
16:54
2014 DMG we were going to include an adventure and we're also going to include the a small like sample starting
17:02
town and I think it was going to be the town from Under ilar the old like you
17:07
know mid late 80s adventure and I can't remember the name of it I think it's
17:13
daggerdale because I think or something Dale because it wasn't in the DS it always confused me like wait so the town
17:19
is called like Riverdale it's in the dands no it's not the D it's over here so I think it's near Cormier or something anyways I always always threw
17:24
me off and uh James Wyatt was going to write it and he had the great idea of the final treasure in the dungeon
17:31
this little dungeon go through you know that outside of town would be a ring of three wishes with one wish left and I
17:37
love that I I don't think there's any better way to introduce someone the dragons I said well here's a wish what do you do it it's like you know now we
17:44
ended up getting it ended up getting cut because the starter set was coming out first and that was really seen as like
17:49
okay this is where we want you to start the quarter books really reference uh no rational person who wants to learn a
17:55
game is going to buy a 400 page 300 Page book and try to read it all I mean people do that but like you know most
18:00
people don't so don't worry about putting a a starter dungeon or something in there because they'll just go use the
18:06
starter set and it also meant it was clearer like what should I start with the starter set if the DMG had a starter thing it just I think be confusing to
18:12
people so the uh but yeah because I think that is something about role playing games that it really highlights
18:18
what makes these games different except I have like my my second little spin on things so I was
18:25
thinking about that right because you'd think hey wish right like like your ex so was you were running the game and the
18:31
player said I want to destroy everything in the d y I was running the game and like I don't I I hesitate to say we were
18:38
running a campaign it was a series of linked one shots they were like Serpent cultists and you know like he could have
18:45
been like I become the serpent God and i' be like okay fine this is you know not like this is not my dream campaign
18:51
that I've been like cooking up for 5 years we can blow it all up tonight and it's fine uh but he was responsible and
18:57
you know it was like 9:00 already anyway so it's like all right you blow up the dungeon great but that that is the answer to your question
19:04
sorry so I was messing around I thought okay so is wish something that only like a human could handle like okay I C wish
19:11
you need another person across the table so then I went I ask chat G
19:17
PT and it's kind of interesting not to go completely but I guess maybe this falls into be careful what you wish for
19:22
but it was really fascinating having it like not only did it totally understand the context like oh a Dungeons and Dragons game with the wish spell
19:29
yes I will have it gave me like four or five different ideas for the wish I think the
19:36
wish I said was oh my players wished for a million XP so what should I do in a way that's gonna be fun and creative
19:41
came with five different different things then it said hey be be careful and then it asked me a question it's
19:47
like what are your players like because that would help me give you a good answer and this is I'm like wow it's
19:53
really interesting how they're feeding more more dat this the uh but I just thought that was kind of funny because my entire thing was like oh surely like
20:00
only a human could adjudicate this like well yeah probably human only really still could but it is interesting to see
20:06
where AI is going and it it contextually someone spent a lot of money for this
20:11
giant thing to process enough Dungeons and Dragons like actual plays texts that
20:18
like oh yeah I totally got the idea of someone casting wish in a tabletop role playing game and could contextualize and answer that question which just kind of
20:26
B blew my mind do you have uh chat PT open when you're running game no uh I do
20:32
not the um so I am very not listen to an entire episode what AI uh I use it for
20:38
one very specific purpose I will open it up and I used to have a paid account when I worked at Wizards because we're
20:43
doing a lot of research R um and the um what I will do with it is say hey chat
20:50
gbt I let's say I'm working on a monster and I'll say hey I am working on a new monster and here are the adjectives I'm
20:56
I'm using to describe it what kind of monster do you think this is so basically doing a like I know about the
21:03
technology you're like hey when I put those words in it's going to go off and this basically giant cloud of Concepts
21:09
and then find what's close to it so then if it comes back with something that doesn't match at all what I'm trying to describe I know to go back and change it
21:16
but like during the game no because honestly um I actually had very far field here Ben if I start wandering too
21:22
far off like the task just smack me but the um when I was at Wizards I was
21:27
approached by someone who was it someone on the business side and they were like hey if we wanted to do like uh Lego
21:36
Style toys for D and and this was this was like a year I think a little bit before they they they figured out they
21:41
did the partnership with Lego Lego but they asked like why don't more people use Legos why don't more people use
21:47
Dwarven Forge you know in their games and a lot of was because well the core gameplay Loop doesn't have space for it
21:55
in the sense that hey weol initiative great we're about to get into a fight this is going to be fun but first let me build a 3D like you
22:02
know it can work but you got to really think about it and so for me that's where chat GG kind of sits because like
22:08
there is a funny thing where like this is kind of interesting it can generate all this text talking about wishes but like I'm if we're playing a game and I'm
22:14
like oh that's interesting give me a moment just looking at my screen reading like the uh yeah the so that for me is
22:22
it's not something that I really think of is as like a runtime research piece like it's more useful to me to get like
22:28
what would the what would Reddit say if I asked Reddit hey I described the monster like this now everyone post what you think I'm describing the uh that's
22:35
fundamentally what you're getting you talk to chat to chat gbt when I was running my one ring game
22:41
I found it really useful because have you read the rules for one ring you know I did ages ago but it's been a while I
22:48
just recently looked at the travel rules and I looked at the those the 5e version I don't think it's I don't think it
22:53
works 55 it works with five that they're selling a d gun so the travel rules are
22:59
exactly where I was going you know like incidents will happen along the way and in the in the core book they kind of
23:05
have a generic like here are the like seven sorts of incidents that might happen and you know they're trying to
23:13
give you enough inspiration to to run with it but also leave it open enough
23:18
that you're not having the same thing happen all the time and uh you know after a few months it's like I could
23:24
really use some fresh ideas here and and chat GPT was really handy for that um
23:30
essentially generating like Random Encounters as you're going through the Wilderness and I I also use it similar
23:36
with your monster idea um again I could be like hey give me uh tolken esque
23:43
synonyms for whatever you know so and and I don't need to read a whole thing it's just like okay I can sprinkle in
23:50
again the appropriate adjectives to kind of get me in that tolk in space but you know if I when I've been running Shadow
23:56
dark like I I don't use it at all CU it's it's like well I kind of know what's going on here I know the score it's not quite the reach for my brain uh
24:03
that tolken is but it was very good as a tolken uh emulator as I was running the
24:08
One Ring no you I am not to derail this entire thing to let's talk about AI now
24:14
but like I am surprised that like Dy Beyond doesn't have any sort of like
24:19
chat gbt feature because even just in ter like you describing Random Encounters like to me that would seem to be perfect like yeah feed it all of my
24:25
books and then I'm like hey the swamp make a random encounter for me based on like my own data right like I own the
24:32
forgot round Source book and like these two monster manuals and all those monsters are tagged anyway so why not just tell me here's something that's in
24:38
a swamp right like that yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they roll something out like that this year because it seems like it seems pretty especially with
24:45
their virtual tabletop uh Maps like that seems like it would be pretty simple to
24:50
just have a button that says make and counter right and it can just look at your characters like oh you have you know three fourth level characters
24:57
here's a balanced fight you know great thank you right so yeah and AI is obviously controversial um and
25:07
there's a lot of feelings swirling all around it I I guess I'm either apocalyptic or utopian depending on your
25:13
point of view uh I think it's going to change everything very quickly uh and if
25:19
we manage it right it's going to be amazing I don't know that we're managing it right but uh I am like I've had a lot
25:26
of people say it's expensive it consumes a lot of energy to reproduce
25:31
a mediocre human and I'm like that might be so but that's today and like we went
25:38
from uh the god image generation software I think called Dolly uh to you
25:44
know AI generated movies that are pretty good in like two or three years you know
25:50
this is going fast it's going fast and I think it reminds me a lot of the 90s where the vibe was oh um digital
25:58
retailers will replace physical retailers and when you look at like like take Amazon as an example they just took
26:04
the physical store and turned it into a digital catalog and like that obviously
26:10
like worked to some extent but I still think like most retail sales like 60 to 70% are still you know face to face um
26:17
and when you look at like what is Amazon today well Amazon was an online bookstore in 1999 today it is a provider
26:23
of web hosting you know and business like you know it's it's it's uh AWS
26:29
Amazon web services that like that's their big part of their business you know and streaming video and so I think
26:35
what my personal feeling of AI is we're using it right now to just replace humans which is a dumb use of the
26:40
technology because we already have people who can do this stuff we don't really gain anything by having AI do it
26:46
I guess you could argue speed but what I'm waiting for which I think we'll see is like what is the AI equivalent of
26:52
like uh uh door Dash or uh Uber right
26:57
where it's it's like oh on my phone I can just say I need to ride somewhere and I hit a button and a car shows up in three minutes and drives me that place
27:05
you know and you know things like that where it's like you know or GPS in your phone where it is like actually
27:11
transformational and like that thing literally just didn't exist or like the convenience is just so different than what you get from a taxi service right
27:17
it's just there's no comparison like this thing wouldn't exist without this technology it's not just you know a
27:25
digital catalog yeah and again I am not a computer science guy I am a science fiction guy
27:34
though so and again as a teacher it's difficult because um you know for a
27:41
while it's been like well we're preparing kids for a future we can't quite see and now it's like well I don't
27:47
quite know what high school is going to be like for you guys sorry I I hope yeah I hope there's dates still I hope you
27:53
still can go on dates uh and that somehow we don't ruin that for you uh
27:58
but yeah um okay but yeah we have indeed wandered far a field uh so let let me ask you
28:05
this then so James Wyatt is probably the most
28:12
significant DND creator that I have not spoken to and don't know that I'm going
28:17
to get to speak to so and for those of you who don't know he he is to this day
28:22
at Wizards of the Coast he has been there for a long time uh yeah gosh he
28:28
started in the Third Edition I want to say he was actually hired by so my understanding and uh is that he was
28:34
hired by TSR then TSR couldn't bring him on because the entire bankruptcy thing uh
28:40
but when Wizards bought you know finalized the purchase and then got everything settled out west he was like
28:47
one of the first people they reached out to to say hey now like you know come work at wizard so I think he always
28:52
worked at wizards but he was like technically hired by TSR that crazy
28:59
yeah so almost 30 years yeah and he worked on uh one of the fourth edition
29:05
core books I forget which uh he obviously worked on fifth edition and he's still there working on 2024 D and D
29:13
so this is a fasile question but what's what's Jim Wyatt like he's oh he's a he's a Methodist minister right he is
29:20
and you know I have not talked so he he he also he was one of the core three designers in fourth edition and uh he I
29:29
know after when we launched thei Edition like the success was pretty surprising we had to cut down the team but he ended
29:36
up over on Magic so he was on Magic from like 2015 to
29:41
2020 then came back I think in time like I think I don't know if he was part of the Court team working on on five5 I I
29:48
just call five5 because I just don't the sentences the um so the uh because they
29:54
have not given us anything to call it so but the um but yeah you know he well I mean I think
30:00
example like gave he was like he had the idea of like let's put a wish in the first dungeon that you go through right
30:06
like I think my impression of James is probably mostly shaped by Eon uh he
30:12
played a sign he was I don't I can't literally say he was like the Jeff grub
30:17
to Keith Baker's uh Ed Greenwood like I don't know enough about the process but
30:22
I know that like James has a very thoughtful approach to World building and
30:28
he has a very holistic view of the game which was interesting with fourth edition because he He's listed as one of
30:34
the core three designers and he did a ton of work on it but I always TR think how to put
30:40
this I always got the sense that his interest was more from the World
30:45
building standpoint rather than necessarily like the game design of like the powers and everything like that like
30:51
obviously he worked on that but there was also a significant thing of like what like the the world of the mentor
30:56
veale how does that together the um but yeah I mean in terms I mean you stick
31:02
around for that long at a company because they clearly like you and you're doing good work the uh but yeah actually
31:08
he's a very thoughtful person he isn't I can't remember him ever like rashly
31:13
saying something you know I'm just trying to go through and think because it's okay we're going back to like you could hear the the disc drive spinning
31:19
and everything this is not my modern solid state drive uh but yeah I think as
31:25
a designer if you just say hey James Wy has written Adventure what would I expect from it I think I would expect a
31:31
an adventure with that looks has a story in the sense there's like there's something going on between people it's
31:37
not just a location and you're gonna go kick in some doors and I think that that
31:43
story would be something that is I mean clearly you know character driven
31:48
characters that you're dealing with but there is a real sense of heroism within it like you are there maybe not to kill
31:54
someone but maybe to redeem them you know help them res Sol something the uh
32:01
yeah you know it is interesting because I'm trying to think if there was an adventure that he worked on that would be like oh yeah that was like James's uh
32:07
oh you know what city of the Spider Queen uh any award-winning Adventure that was I think that was like one of his signature works the uh on back in
32:14
the the three five days now and now maybe I'll look at up and be like oh this is nothing like it's just a big
32:20
murder Fest like a he's really a power gamer but you know I game with him and he always seemed to be like you know
32:25
more on the stories of cool um so can can can I just ask you some
32:31
questions since we we've wandered for field yeah we're super far and I don't know what you're going to title this
32:36
episode like again I it's it's I always think of it as we start with a text and we go from there and you know it's we're
32:42
not chained by it uh but again like you at least unless I misunderstand you have
32:48
not done a ton of media in the past 18 months uh no though I'm ramping up now
32:53
I'm actually back on social media I'm on X and uh it's been really fun it's like
32:58
oh yeah this is like it feel like I don't know what happened like it was super toxic for a very long time just
33:03
speaking my my own experience I have a very different experience on social media compared other people because of my profile you know people who I am uh
33:10
but it's been really fun and it's been very fun to just bounce ideas you know I G part of it two is like you know I've
33:16
been tracking five five in its release you know and trying to see like what's kind of going on like gaming as a whole
33:23
is a super weird place right now where and if I had summarize it based on what
33:28
I've seen so far people made a lot of plans in 2020 by taking the World As We
33:34
Knew It In Like September 2020 and looking at those Trends and there's drawing a very long line that assume
33:41
those Trends will just keep going on forever and they were right for about 14 months and then things changed radically
33:48
but the nature of game Dead is now all these games coming out are games that were kind of created with like oh this is how people will want to consume
33:55
here's the games people want and what they'll want to see games about and so I think there's a very interesting place
34:00
where there is just a huge mismatch right now between what people are making and what people want to consume and I
34:05
don't know if that has really ever happened before in Nas Market entertainment the uh yeah so yeah so
34:12
fire away well since you brought up X um and your return to it uh I'll ask about
34:18
your departure from it and say uh for three years people were like Mike Merles
34:24
was fired from DND in some way shape or form so were you fired from DND D I was
34:29
not fired from d and d and so you know I don't want to go into too many details everything that happened back then because it's just like oh you know what
34:35
that was like four or five years ago but no the uh so it was actually kind of interesting and I wonder if part of my social media thing is a lot of the
34:42
people who like really latched on to that and all this weird conspiracy theory like I don't know like maybe
34:49
they're all on some other social network now or something like that or it's just like isn't as interesting if the guy isn't worrying on but no no I I left the
34:55
um you I don't want to get into like you know the and there's not really any great details but the uh no I moved over to to Magic the Gathering I had the
35:01
chance to work on Magic I'd been working on some digital tools for D and uh I I
35:06
had and I know there was this thing where someone publicly said I was no longer working on D and that's like no
35:12
that never happened I have no idea why that happened but I'm not even GNA touch that the um but the I was working on
35:18
digital tools and then the company was looking at like what do we want to do with digit what's our next step forward
35:25
uh I was in favor of a very DM Centric approach uh let's make tools for DMS we have D andd Beyond that's great for
35:31
players but I want tools that will make running D andd faster and easier for me
35:37
uh and you know and it was kind of the decision of like which direction we want to go the company didn't want to go in
35:42
that direction so it's like I'm not really interested in working on something that's like so far from what I want to work on uh and that's why I got
35:48
the job offered to G work on Magic so the um yeah the um so that was not like
35:54
no at no point to be clear if like a quarter of what people talked
36:01
about had happened I would not have kept my job like it was but you know that's
36:06
kind of part I don't really even know what people think like happen any but yeah no that that was never even close
36:12
to coming up being untable so so obviously you were not working on D and
36:17
D at the time but what was the atmosphere within the company during
36:22
during the whole ogl Fiasco like what was it like within the walls of wizards oh people took it very very seriously
36:30
you know and you know I think when people released I don't know if anyone at Wizards ever has publicly said
36:36
anything or talked about it I think it was genuinely surprising to people and
36:42
and I'm gonna be in the weird position of like oh this company laid me off but I'm gonna kind of defend them now like
36:48
one of the things I do feel bad with people who got CAU up in it you know who aren't Wizards was they probably thought
36:53
hey we're doing exactly what the community would want us to do we have some ideas for how we want change it I am sure like at this stage remember it's
37:00
2020 um the business is blowing up there's a lot of potential for licensing
37:05
right like and it's going to be hard to negotiate a license with someone if they're like oh we don't actually need
37:10
to work with you we can get everything you have by just going and using this open G license and if you look back you
37:16
know the the things they were looking at were uh you know if you're making X dollars or more you have to give us
37:22
royalties etc etc etc that to me feels like those are terms were coming out of a place of we don't want like lucasfilm
37:30
showing up and doing a Star Wars D and D game and just you know selling bajillion copies because like they could all Li
37:36
this but just decided not to because the system's free now there's a lot of reasons why I think they they misread the situation but I think the one thing
37:43
I think people you know have to give a little maybe consideration is they were
37:48
sending out the license to people with this idea of getting feedback on now you could argue that no one took them seriously and thought no this is just
37:54
you sending this to me and you're going to ignore my feedback but like that to me doesn't kind of make
38:00
sense because if I was in I don't know I'm just going to say if I was in that position of like hey I think people going to hate this so
38:05
much and I'm gonna do it anyway why would I show it to people early because then the story is just
38:12
going to be like hey this thing is so bad we hated by the way they showed it to us and ignored us like that makes it even worse I mean I I will I will say
38:18
the sources I've had within Wizards seem sincere when they say yeah we send it out for feedback and then someone
38:24
stabbed Us in the face because again from from from within Wiz that is the point of view right like you just sent
38:30
this thing out for feedback and now it's all over the Internet and everyone is angry and one of the people that you
38:35
trusted to look at this and negotiate with you say stabbed you in the face and uh again I can understand that point of
38:44
view uh but I I will say though there is something he said for I think the one
38:49
thing they didn't quite account for because this would have been 2022 is when they're sending stuff out and had
38:55
they announced the new addition yet I think 55 had been announced yeah they they announced it I want to say around
39:00
August and then December they sent out OG we got 1.0a I think it's 1.0a um for
39:09
feedback and then by the within a week of the New Year within a week of the New Year Lin codega was uh writing articles
39:16
about it yeah and I think that's what their their miscalculation was you know there's a a lot of people like me who
39:23
worked on fourth edition you may have heard this be talked to them about hey why did fourth edition you know have so
39:28
much trouble and ultimately like almost wreck the business the um and it just
39:34
tried to changeed too much at once it was a new world it was a new game mechanic forgot Realms got radically
39:40
changed the novel line was like really paired down digital tools right it's just so much change it's like what what
39:46
am I supposed to how am I supposed to make this journey from where I was to where I am to where we're going and I think that was maybe their big
39:52
miscalculation was I I think it's it it is like almost like the same root cause maybe like as like oh we don't really
39:59
understand how people will look at this so we're going to show it to them but not knowing they'll think like no people
40:04
are going to be very on edge about this and very like no this is a direct threat you know you trying to be as nice as
40:10
possible because to put it in context maybe maybe Wizards didn't see you just
40:16
announced a new edition so people are immediately going back to fourth edition and the GSL and they're immediately
40:22
going back to to an a space of you are trying to do a new version of D and D
40:28
that can cut us out so this doesn't feel like hey can you give us feedback it felt more like this is the deal take it
40:34
or not can you for the audience that doesn't know what was the GSL so the GSL
40:40
was so we have the ogl for Third Edition and uh the company did not want to do the ogl for fourth edition and again
40:46
this is another example of just like of all the path this was the worst um ra and I think businesses do this all the
40:53
time and it driving banana um so they didn't want want to do the ogl performance for reasons right uh it's
41:00
competition blah blah blah blah blah so rather just say hey there's no gaming license which I think would have been a
41:05
much better approach people would have just said like okay like that's I'm upset but like that's it they had the
41:11
GSL and the GSL is basically like imagine if you took the ogl and said what are things we could put in this to
41:17
make it so that no one would ever use it because it's so obviously a bad deal and
41:22
then like double that now that's the GSL like it was so obviously like no why would anyone do this this feels like
41:28
you're actively stabbing Us in the face and so I think it had a similar thing of like oh they clearly didn't want any
41:34
competition for their products and so therefore they didn't actually want anyone to make stuff for it so they
41:41
offered such a horrible deal that no one would take them up on it and I think very few people did like you had to like
41:47
register your company with wizards they could like revoke it at any time you had to like send in all it was just super
41:53
fiddly and it would have been just much cleaner to just say no there's no ogl and it's kind of thing where like you
41:59
need to be in touch with the audience enough to know like Hey we're we're doing this because people will be really
42:04
upset we don't have the ogl but we don't want to do the ogl like as soon as you're in having that conversation you
42:09
need to step back go why are we getting rid of the ogl again or whatever the decision is like if we're gonna do all
42:15
jump through all these hoops to like make it look like we're not doing the thing we're doing like just do the thing right or just don't do the thing that's
42:21
the even better answer just don't right like hoy that people yeah uh yeah so
42:30
yeah I mean I guess that's long and short of it is like yeah I feel bad to people who got stuck in that situation because I just think they weren't quite
42:36
they didn't have the right context to understand the reaction and it's the worst outcome like you think you're
42:41
being reasonable so then when the other people people react you think maybe they're are they being unreasonable are the children wrong and this is a case
42:48
where I mean no the children were not wrong and to Wizard's credit like they
42:54
then made like they released the game under the um Whata call license now Creative Commons Creative Commons which
42:59
is like okay now they have no control over it and then five5 came out in like sort of change things like but I think
43:07
you could just make stuff for it using the current 5e thing I think people understand how to use it like it's it's
43:13
a super yeah so then it makes even the decision to like crack down even more like okay I don't know why like like I
43:20
said I think it's just purely from like this doesn't make any sense from a licensing standpoint so you know I think if you just look at it from that point
43:26
it makes total sense challenges finding the context the the story I've heard is
43:33
um that there was a French video game called H solasta crown of the magistar
43:39
or I might even be saying it wrong yeah that that was a real turning point for Chris Cox um
43:49
because again for those of you who don't know and I didn't know until I was told about it uh it's a French video game
43:54
that used fifth edition as its end um and it was it was D and like all the
44:01
uh press was this is the best DND video game ever made and it's not DN D um and
44:08
it I I've not played it but it seemed to do very well it made a bunch of money um
44:14
and somebody told me that there was a license involved at some point but I have not gotten the full story on that
44:20
yet yeah I think it was so at one point I was asked to play it the um I'm
44:26
looking it up on steam right now and so like it's alltime reviews has got 17,000
44:31
reviews total which is pretty good right but it's not like I mean let's compare that
44:37
like I mean now obviously I'm comparing a game of the year but you know 177,000
44:42
reviews compared to 637000 reviews for pg3 it's funny
44:48
because it's one of those things where again you think of context right like so
44:53
okay this this is like very convenient because this is this is what you get to hear my theory theory of like why ttrpgs
44:59
don't scale so the uh I have this Theory what do you mean by don't scale here
45:05
yeah it's a business thing so the uh man I hope this makes sense because we're using your air time if this ends up
45:11
being stupid no this is this is great this is this is the way the conversation goes so the so I have this Theory before
45:18
we start recording let me rewind a little bit I I I I told you that I think one of the big flaws of ttrpgs is that
45:23
everyone wants to pretend they're this super bespoke weirdo unique business that like is so different from anything
45:29
else that you like cannot possibly take learnings from other areas and bring it to Paar and that is just so completely
45:37
wrong right like in the example I gave when we were talking is like oh people look at RPGs like only the dungeon
45:42
master buys anything you can play D and D or vampire with only one person buying
45:47
anything and that's so weird and how do we solve that it's like that makes no sense when I play Settlers of Katan we
45:54
don't all show up with our settlers boxes like one person brings a copy of settlers and what settlers doesn't do
46:01
what RPGs try to do is say hey we'll sell stuff to the players to the other
46:07
players which like if you apply that to settlers or almost any other game you have this weird thing we're like we're
46:14
say sitting down to play sers and our host say Ben you're our host you pull out your set and then I from my backpack
46:20
pull out my oh I bought the armies expansion I can build armies now and attack you guys I mean you can't because
46:27
you didn't buy the expansion but I did like I can't imagine any s scenario where people like oh that's cool a we're
46:33
GNA let you do that no they'd be weird not buy it and then B think oh these set Katan people they're such great you know
46:39
business feel like isn't it so great they're making stuff where you could just buy to be better it's fundamentally what you're like saying like yeah I
46:45
bought a book with a bunch of new spells and classes and stuff like it's obviously those are gonna be more powerful I mean I've been in this
46:51
business for almost 30 years like that's what happens right but we think that that makes sense and like no makes sense
46:57
only in role playing games no one else would run their business that way and so but there is one thing that I think role
47:03
playing games share with very high-end professional software like specifically
47:09
like like like Unix distributions or like very like you like the the the software Machinery you sell to design
47:16
chips you know like I'm Gonna Make You Know design the next chip you know you it's gonna power the next generation of AI stuff where the distance between the
47:25
customer and the person making decisions about the product at an executive level
47:30
has to be as short as possible because your user is an expert like so Dungeons and Dragons is a
47:37
dungeon master they're going to use these tools or any role playing game to make content they are creating content
47:44
you really need to know what's valuable to them to make a product that they're going to use because they're going to develop their way of working and they
47:50
are not going to like change how they do things in order to accept your product into their like work Loop you know and
47:57
that's I think is the key to role playing games where other products other games don't have that super short walk
48:04
like you you must have executive you know decision-making as close to the customer as possible because the games
48:12
the the active creation is not quite so fundamental to everything uh Magic
48:18
Gathering I think is a good example like you make decks but you don't make cards right so you can afford to have a little
48:24
bit more space there uh because not so onet to one like I have to really know the customer they're going to make great
48:30
cards in the set no they're GNA make great decks much more structured something on Extreme Edge right like you
48:36
know the milk you buy at your local grocery store I don't need any connection to that guy running that
48:41
business I just need to know that they are deciding to keep you know the milk is clean and it's a good price right really
48:48
the only thing the only way that they in an executive can communicate with me meaningfully is price right now they
48:54
again there could be the bad communication of oh this is you know infested with bacteria okay no thank you
48:59
the um but ideally there is no communication there because I'm not worried about buying you know spoiled milk in my my my little store I'm just
49:05
looking like I just went and bought milk today and my choice was driven by cost my wife needed some milk because she's
49:10
making some uh making some cupcakes and so I just said you know what here's how much she needs here is the cheapest
49:16
version of that amount she needs um but that's not RP people don't go people
49:21
don't go don't go to your local game store and say hey what's the cheapest role playing game that's the one I want right
49:28
that's not how they work at all you know they want to see something that speaks to them literally like you know they're
49:33
looking at the product going oh this is yeah I want to build stuff with this you know and uh to me that that's the thing
49:40
that doesn't scale up and so to look this all the way back around like the ogl and stuff I think that's where you run into trouble with any role play game
49:47
DD or otherwise you got decisions made about a role playing game the the information there lives in the edge
49:53
right it lives in the audience it is not do not exist anywhere else and so then you end up with someone
49:59
deciding let's get rid of the ogl because you know we're looking at the licensing business and we're not relying
50:04
on maybe the Frontline person who's like the community manager you know to like come in and weigh in and say hey here's
50:10
the strategy to make this work the um and so yeah that's what I think the real thing it reveals is you know and and
50:17
that that's my experience is the the games that do well we talk about Shadow dark earlier that game was 100% a
50:22
byproduct of Kelsey Dion's ability to build the community and to interact
50:28
uh and to be part of we're talking uh a week or so after Charlie Hall wrote the
50:33
uh it's time for Indie role playing game Publishers to get loud article um where
50:39
he really pointed out that DND D doesn't have a lot coming out after the the core
50:47
stuff comes out like there's the starter set and I want to gosh were there Adventures announced I don't even recall
50:52
yeah I think they have a collection of dragon based adventures coming out out in a few months or something like that I
50:59
me we're talking in January of 2025 so I think it's supposed to be for the spring April May is somewhere in there
51:06
okay oh I should ask five more minutes that okay five more minutes is great yeah that's perfect so I can go make dinner um and uh you know like Charlie
51:16
was was saying hey uh this is your chance uh smaller tabletop role playing
51:22
game Publishers although people some people really took issue with uh him talking about them getting loud uh again
51:29
I don't know if you saw this online but it can be very hard to be a ttrpg
51:34
producer who is not making DND uh living in a d and world and and saying hey come
51:40
come try my game uh so to see someone from polygon say well the problem is you
51:46
guys aren't loud a lot of people took that the wrong way but the thing I took from it was just that the uh Gap in D
51:54
and D's publishing schedule does represent a genuine opportunity for
51:59
Indie Publishers uh cuz it seems like when when uh I shouldn't say it seems
52:05
like when TSR wasn't making stuff in 1997 I got reports uh from the time
52:10
saying that all these other games they're sales shot up uh so if D and D is not producing things it it does
52:17
represent uh an opportunity to expand market share for other game designers
52:23
which I thought was interesting and So speaking of like you know uh the the distance from the uh uh
52:31
Market to those making decisions um all right what else do I want to ask you so
52:38
you actually want the thing with the the Charlie's article that I think is weird is that this is the same number of
52:46
releases that D&D has traditionally been delivering throughout fifth edition like this isn't weird to have this window my
52:52
theory is when you look at back of the ogl the real impact of it is that it
52:58
made D and D uncool again D and D was cool right you have like Joe manganello
53:03
and people like that like openly talking about playing D and D D and D was something that was kind of interesting
53:09
and creative and fun and different and I think what the ogl did was take that
53:17
concept that Wizards and this idea of creativity that is inherent in the D
53:22
andd brand because of it's It's a role playing game and I think those two two things were sundered and I don't know if
53:28
you could ever put them back together because I think essentially you know it's this phrase the Mandate of Heaven right I think fundamentally what
53:34
happened was Wizards has lost the Mandate of Heaven and I don't see them even trying to get it back because what
53:40
I find fascinating about the fact that it was Charlie Hall who wrote that is this is the same Charlie Hall who wrote
53:45
glowing reviews of the 5.54 books but then at the same time he also then writing this is your chance because D
53:52
and D seems to be stumbling like how do you square that how do I go out and a review like here's the new two Star Wars
53:57
movies they're the best amazing the greatest Star Wars movies ever made by the way Star Wars has never been weaker
54:03
now is there a chance other science fiction properties like so to me there is to me it's that context thing again
54:09
like maybe this is the best players handbook ever written but the Vibes the audience the people playing these games
54:16
they don't seem excited about it like we're not seeing a ground solo support and excitement and all these where are
54:22
the third party products that's my f pass because that's you think oh there's a gap I mean remember before the ogl
54:28
even came up back when 3 launched white wolf had a monster book there were multiple Adventures at Gen Con like the
54:35
license wasn't even official yet people they're already Adventure showing up in stores we're not seeing that what's
54:40
ostensibly like this is the new standard going forward if anything we're seeing the opposite creators are running in the opposite direction I mean that's where
54:46
I'm going like U you to plug my patreon patreon.com mik merals onew the um you
54:52
know this time last year when I was looking at like my post Wizards options I thought why maybe I could start doing fifth edition compatible stuff and now
54:59
what I'm finding is I just don't want to like it just seems boring it's just like
55:04
you know it's it's like trying to like you know start a hair metal band in 1992 it's like no no no it's everyone's mopy
55:13
and we're wearing flannel and it's Seattle and rain and we're like you know it's Nirvana now man it's not like poison like and I that's the vibe I get
55:21
right now it's just like yeah there's still you know poison was still releasing albums still selling probably like hundreds of thousands or a million
55:27
copies but they didn't have any of the energy you know like it's moved on but what's
55:32
been interesting to me is that that role play game culture is still there and this is what I find fascinating about gaming in general especially ttrpgs I
55:39
don't think we've ever had a a period where ttrpgs were flourishing and had a lot of energy and excitement around them
55:45
and d and d wasn't on the upswing because I do think that's what's happening now when very strange Waters
55:50
where I think D and D is now uncool uh and it's but it's not like the audience is shrinking as opposed to like
55:56
you know a friend of mine would use the example the late 90s when TSR was really struggling you know they got bought up
56:02
and I think back then D andd wasn't very cool either the uh but it was taking down the entire industry with it like
56:09
yes shadon are the games who were getting market share that overall Pi was shrinking you trading card games were taking off video games are becoming
56:15
better than ever um but yeah I think this is a weird weird space we in now where in 2024 will be the first time in
56:24
the history of role play games a new addition D and D launched and I would
56:29
put good money down on the table that Brandon sanderson's role playing game
56:35
generated more Revenue than the new edition cors how much did his role playing game
56:42
make I'm gonna looked at it right now because I said that I'm like I God I hope I didn't just like 5 okay then I'm
56:48
clearly wrong the um well as long as we're whipping out numbers I will uh so uh for the I am
56:57
digitizing my entire historical archive and I am uh posting one document per
57:04
week on the show Discord for patreon subscribers so uh if if you want access
57:11
to uh historical documents like like the one I'm about to cite it's only three bucks a month and I don't think I'm ever
57:17
going to change it I'm just going to make those three bucks uh so amazing that you have to come and give them to
57:22
me but in 1994 uh TSR made a total
57:29
of uh $6 million on hardback books and
57:34
hardbound rules and only 1.5 million on modules so and again if you take that
57:42
you you you change it for today it doesn't seem like a ton of money to a
57:47
billion dollar Corporation and even if uh 2024 D and is doing really really
57:53
well like you know what 10 million $20 million you think like how much did
57:58
Brandon Sanderson bring in yeah so the the Cosby role playing game Kickstarter um brought in over $50
58:05
million um the if so the now this get where things get really interesting
58:11
because if you were to look at your 5.5 cor books this where I kind of fun I got to do this for a job because I learned
58:17
all this stuff very I'm amazing at parties people just can't stop inviting me over no it's the
58:23
I got a copy here of the dungeon master guide and I think the most telling thing about this in terms of the business is uh is the words printed in the
58:31
USA they printed this book in the United States I'm going to tell you as someone who works in role playing games that you only do that if you absolutely must
58:37
because your schedule has been completely shredded because you are paying way more money to ship in the states like don't even talk to me about
58:43
saving money on shipping it does not even close so you're printing in the states and you're charging 50 bucks so
58:50
I'm going to use that as my thing that even with those numbers like $15 million assuming you're selling either through
58:56
distribution or you're selling a digital copy now they have they did sell copies direct so you know actually go back
59:02
Andress my math very arbitrarily here to a little bit higher number per unit but that's kind of bad for them it means
59:08
they've sold well it means they have to sell fewer but so $15 million let's say they're getting an average of I'm G say
59:14
$30 per cor book sold they've sold theyve released the dungeon Masters Guide and the player
59:20
handbook divide that by 30 but have to Sol half a million books total
59:27
I you know and I think just looking at the numbers on um you know amazon.com oh so and you I don't think they're coming
59:33
close to that yeah I think they're about half that probably well and they uh they
59:39
said they they they said it's amazing that it's sold more than anything ever
59:45
again I'm I'm what did they say ah so this is the thing they did not say that
59:50
they said they it well they Ed the word fastest fastest stld oh but they also said specifically this is our largest
59:57
first print run which implies there have been D andd print runs that were larger
1:00:03
that just weren't first print runs they've also been using oh God I feel bad I don't mean to roast people I used
1:00:09
to here we are Mike you're doing it the the internet's gonna love it that's I'm a free agent now I just talk about this
1:00:15
no but if you look it is interesting to look at the way they talk about it I think there was a CNBC article and they
1:00:21
said something like uh the players's handbook has been like touched
1:00:26
by more players or has been delivered to more players or like the the the addition like they're very careful to
1:00:32
never just say it is the best selling thing ever and the I mean this working
1:00:37
in video games you see this a lot where people will say things like uh just today Electronic Arts had their um
1:00:43
earnings call and they said something like you know we have delivered 1.5 million copies of some game to fans it's
1:00:49
like oh that sounds impressive but you're think wait delivered it to fans so it's not sales they didn't say sell they said delivered so it could be
1:00:55
included like free downloads people getting it through a subscription service like you have Xbox live maybe it's available
1:01:01
there so you can't do a one for one and say that's sold and a lot of their comments have had that sort of phrasing
1:01:07
where it's like it's the fastest like well of course you had like you know four months of pre-orders you know they
1:01:13
keep referring to it beating 2014 it's like well who cares the market was a shadow of itself back in 2014 and
1:01:20
they're not just coming out saying it has sold more it's all these other words around it which then like people like me working the business well then I have to
1:01:26
go and you know go through their press releases and then triangulate things I'll give you another example they were
1:01:32
they at the end of the year and I do have to go into sex yeah and I'm like I said five minutes ago 10 minutes ago but
1:01:38
yeah 10es ago this interesting and my wife doesn't want to talk about this my daughter definitely talk about this it's
1:01:43
not work but they they pulled out a number at the end of last year and they said there were 3.6 million characters
1:01:50
made for D 5 which sounds pretty impressive right they launched the character builder in August so that's
1:01:55
what five months it's pretty good right so 3.6 million characters 720 720,000
1:02:02
characters Perth well I because the way I'm wired as my mom said to my wife
1:02:08
before we got married like he's a little odd need there just certain things you have to learn to deal with the um I
1:02:15
heard that number and immedately thought wait a second D beond back in in January 2020 publicly released how many
1:02:22
characters had been made on their service and so I spent you know other
1:02:28
people stay up late playing video games I stay up late like going through transcripts of YouTube videos and then
1:02:33
getting like lowkey on tilt at Adam Brad like he speaks so slowly like even on two times speed slow right it's my my
1:02:41
Northeastern New Englander thing kicking in um but yeah he said in January of
1:02:46
2020 that there had been 30 million characters created on D Beyond which is
1:02:51
well that's a lot and then you trace back and say how long had D Beyond been running at that point 30 months so
1:02:57
you're looking at a million characters per month and that's assuming hey some of those months were the launch month where like clearly they didn't just immediately go to a million so you look
1:03:03
and they say hey they're they're bragging about this number it's 720,000 characters per month which is you know
1:03:10
28% behind where they were preco when the service was just launching so like
1:03:16
what was that number like for December of 2019 it was probably higher than a million because that was not you know that butter was not just spread out
1:03:23
evenly so there's things like that you're like going okay so what's actually going on and this is you this is my theory of the case is just
1:03:30
like d andd just isn't cool right now people aren't like yeah give me D and D but I think they are saying yeah I like
1:03:36
roleplay games and where that's going to go you know the $5 million for Brandon Sanderson like that's wild right like he
1:03:44
could have done a lot of things and he chose to do a role playing game uh you know Matt kill's role playing game
1:03:49
breaking five million you know things like that um so yeah I think we are in I
1:03:55
don't want to get too optimistic but I think and by saying it aloud I'm going to jinx it you know like as every good
1:04:01
Superstition superstitious person thinks um we might be entering a post D and D
1:04:06
era you know D andd has always been like the number one game by far but I think
1:04:12
you could probably go back and look at 2024 and say D and D overall revenue for ttrpgs D and D was less than
1:04:19
half and I think I could make that case now that I'm saying I'm like maybe I should go trying to figure that out well
1:04:24
from from your mouth to St Cub's ears um I I I will close simply by saying uh
1:04:31
before 2024 D and D came out um I really tried to yell about the
1:04:37
fact that except for fifth edition every version of D and D did worse than the ones before it because uh you know again
1:04:45
I have a lot of respect for the creatives involved uh on 2024 d and d and I thought that these CEOs are just
1:04:53
going to roast them if it doesn't do better than d and d 5e and I'm like it's
1:04:58
almost imp it almost can't do better than D and D 5e because it was it sucked
1:05:04
all the oxygen out of the room my books are still good why do I need to buy this like it's just uh I just don't think
1:05:12
unless something extraordinary happens that it's going to be able to match the success of 5e in part simply because 5e
1:05:18
was so successful so I tried to get that idea out there in the hopes that somebody could take it to the CEOs and
1:05:24
be like look it wasn't us uh but you know think what we're talking about goes right back to what I was
1:05:29
saying earlier because when the distance between the customer and the decision maker gets to whatever the business is
1:05:34
there's just a certain it's like a law of physics this is how far you can be aart and still have a viable business
1:05:40
RPGs man like why was fifth edition so successful because not only were we super close to the customer like you
1:05:46
know Nathan Stewart literally is like on Reddit reading threads and hey I people are complaining about this right and
1:05:51
then when critical role came and said hey Nathan we want to stream the game he like sure right if that had gone through a
1:05:57
committee like like a year later they would said yes but the people making those decisions like Nathan like lose
1:06:03
Shu like myself you know Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford going to conventions taking notes and implementing it you
1:06:09
know when they got back to the office and uh I think that is something I noticed that that I'm back on social
1:06:15
media like I don't see any of the D and staff on social media and that is a that's kind of sad because I think that
1:06:20
was one thing that really helped t&b um and yeah so all right well you have to
1:06:26
make you have to make food so I'm gonna say thank you so much um great to talk
1:06:32
to you and uh have a great dinner yeah take care right by thank you bye bye all right and if you're still listening to
1:06:38
this I am here to tell you about our amazing patreon uh if you are a patreon
1:06:45
subscriber uh you get access to a number of amazing perks uh firstly as I already
1:06:51
mentioned I am digitizing my entire historical document archive and posting
1:06:57
a document per week on our Discord uh be the first people to see amazing
1:07:03
historical documents from the past I think this is really cool hopefully those of you listening to this are also
1:07:09
fascinated to hear about things like the fact that uh uh in 1994 TSR sold a whole
1:07:16
a total of $126 worth of graphic novels in Canada
1:07:22
uh cuz that is how granular some of the information I'm posting up here is is going to be um in addition to that I
1:07:29
have special patreon only episodes uh you can hear me and uh Dr Scott Bruner
1:07:35
discuss the dungeon Masters Guide only by subscribing to our patreon uh I have
1:07:40
also started booking guests for other special episodes uh in February I will
1:07:47
be talking with Ken height designer of kns black agents in the Dracula dossier
1:07:53
and Sandy Peterson designer of first edition kak cthulu uh I'm thinking of it
1:07:59
as a series I'm going to call designers on designers uh Ken said that uh kak
1:08:05
cthulu is his favorite game I'm like how how about I have Ken talk to Sandy Peterson about kak cthulu for an hour
1:08:11
and I record it uh they're both brilliant designers what what's that conversation going to be like I don't know but it's going to be fantastic I
1:08:18
bet and I'm going to record it and put it up only for patreon subscribers and all of that can be had for a mere $3 a
1:08:27
month uh listeners our plan is to keep the $3 level the only level we want to
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go to patreon sign up and get access to all of those amazing perks uh to those
1:08:47
of you who are already patreon subscribers thank you so much for your support uh we couldn't do this without you and this was a fantastic convers
1:08:55
ation with Mike Merles I hope you all enjoyed it and it's very cold and dark where I am and I hope it's uh bright
1:09:02
light and warm where you are be well all
1:09:17
[Music]
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