Will the last person to leave WOTC please turn out the lights...

[Mythtify]

I agree with all the others that have said WotC falls apart or not, it won't destroy my game. It is a bit upsetting that "our hobby" seems to have been kidnapped by a corp. gaint, that only is intrested in squeezing as much money from it as it can. If Wizards falls, Dungeons and Dragons will live on. Heck, RPGs in general will continue to thrive. I know that a lot of people dont think that there is life beyond D&D, but there are a lot of good RPGs.

Third edition has enough stuff published for it now, both offical, and third party, that I can't think of anything that I could "need". A lot of stuff I may like to see, but nothing I couldn't make up myself.

I sincerly would like to see Wizards continue to publish. In the past, they have had the best stable of writters and designers anywhere. Unfortunatly, Wizards fate is no longer in its own hands, and unless Hasbro sells it, it never will be again.
Oh, and Hasbro dosn't care about what you think, or the hobby that you love. All they care about is $.

 

[Zappo]

The problem is that the RPG market follows its own laws, which aren't those of a big corporation. It's impossible for Valterra to fully please Hasbro. RPG products are very expensive to make, requiring artists and playtesting by experienced people and good materials; they have a relatively small market, and have ridiculously low prices for their value. Hell, I routinely pay 50-60 euros for my CS textbooks, and the most used of them get used ten times less than my PHB.

There's just no way, as things stand now, to make big money consistantly from pen-and-paper RPGs. Eventually Hasbro will realize this, and they'll either try to change the situation (which won't be pretty), or sell D&D.

 

[cildarith]

Let them bleed. Won't bother me one bit.

If you have a PHB, DMG, and MM (of any edition), some dice and a handful of friends, you can play D&D happily til the day you die.

Enjoy the game and the company of friends. Ignore the stuffed shirts, and the corporate big-wigs and their inane descisions - they are not what the game is about.

 

[Pramas]

As an example lets take Green Ronin they apparently have 4 full time employees plus a number of freelance writers yet in the year 2002 they have put out 8 high quality products one of which was a Hardcover. In the same period WoTC with dozens of employees
has put out 10 products 4 of which were hardcover. Certainly not that much more than Green Ronin manages with a skeleton crew.

In fact, only two of us are doing Green Ronin full time. Our webmaster and art director have day jobs.

 

[Desdichado]

Actually, the OGL absoluately cannot be revoked. What's in the SRD is in there to stay, and will not go anywhere. That has been confirmed numerous times by Ryan Dancey (the architect of the whole concept) and he specifically structured it so that legally Hasbro (or anyone else) can never make it go away.

What needs to happen now is that bloody intern needs to finish opening envelopes and update the SRD with some of the newer books. After that, as far as I'm concerned, I'd almost rather see Hasbro drop the ball on D&D. That'd sure beat 4e coming out in a few years, and raining on everything we've built up over the last few years. With the SRD, 3rd party publishers can continue to support D&D indefinately, gradually adding rules and systems that cover every conceivable genre. For new players, tell them to download the SRD: it's free (as opposed to a $30 PHB) and you're good to go.

Long live d20!

 

[BlackMoria]

Hmmph. A majority of people keep painting this rosy picture about the D20 publishers but sorry, I don't buy it...

Part of the reason that TSR ended up nearly in the dumpster was that they fragmented their own market and they saturated their own market.

You think that some 80+ D20 publishers are not going to result in a fragmented and saturated market?

How many D20 superheros games do we need?.... I count about a half dozen already - and there is more in the works.

How many necromancer supplements can the market bear?
How many 'splat books'? How many campaign settings? Need I go on?

The market is becoming fragmented and and will reach a saturated at some point and it will only grow worse.

Consumer confusion will only get worse. Which of X of the dozen of D20 superheroes products do I buy? As more and more products come out and less and less is setting them apart from each other, how can the situation not get worse?

Don't think for one moment that the D20 publishers are immune to the forces which brought TSR low and is causing turmoil. A hundred employees or only two employees, you have to make money to stay in business - its just a question of degree. A bloated WOTC may be finding that out now. A small D20 publisher may discover that after a few years of flat sales.

I'll make a prediction here - of the 80+ D20 publishers now, I say less that 20 will still be here in five years. If I am wrong, in five years time, you all can have a good laugh at my expense.

But if I am right, I will remind you all that I told you so....

 

[Lizard]

Part of the reason that TSR ended up nearly in the dumpster was that they fragmented their own market and they saturated their own market.


I'll make a prediction here - of the 80+ D20 publishers now, I say less that 20 will still be here in five years. If I am wrong, in five years time, you all can have a good laugh at my expense.

You're right and wrong.

You're right in that The Crash Is Coming. I'm only surprised it hasn't come YET. I know that D20 is hardly the 'license to print money' that it was, but there's still a lot more companies out there than I thought there'd be by now. I think we're going to see the first major waves of collapse/conslidation before 2003.

But you're wrong in thinking that TSRs woes are wholly applicable to D20. Remember the difference in scale. A D20 publisher can stay afloat on sales of a few thousand units; TSR needed sales an order of magnitude or two more than that just to break even.

 

[Desdichado]

All of y'all's doom and gloom isn't based on any "evidence", it's just pessimism. Fragmentation of the market isn't a problem for a smaller company in which small print runs and sales are healthy and fine. Fragmentation of that market is good in that it leads to more games, more supplements and more genres being covered, making the consumer better off. Folks like Green Ronin, Mongoose, Thunderhead Games, or what-have-you don't need to become TSR/WotC in order to survive: they're doing just fine as they are. Companies smaller than them are doing just fine.

Trust me, I'm an economist!

PS. Actually, I really am. I have a BS in Economics, although I also qualified for a BA. The situation in which many smaller companies compete with each other is much better for the customer than the situation in which many larger companies dominate the market. You're point about saturation is valid, but a long ways off. There's entire genres that are completely untouched still. Almost everyone so far published has been standard D&D fare. I think you'll be surprised at how much more mileage the d20 system as a whole can have left in it. Besides, most of what you're worried about being cancelled is merely recast stuff that appeared in 2e. How much of that do we really need? And you're worried about saturation in the d20 market?

 

[AmerginLiath]

There's one way, and one way alone, we can save WotC...

We're gonna have to do our damnedest to gets the kids of America hooked back on Pokemon!

 

[roytheodd]

Okay, the subject line is overly cynical but it did get you in here.


The burning question is....when will the bleeding stop.

Two years of layoffs. Key people leave or are shown the door. Products like Ghostwalk, Races of Faerun and others may never get published. The future of FR products are in question.

The RPGA gets a shakeup. Polyhedron gets rolled into Dungeon.
Star Wars Gamer mag is cancelled.

The magazine division gets sold off. Chainmail gets cancelled before it even gets a chance to attract market share. Now the on-line store is sold off. And rumors abound that the retail division is being sold off.

So, when will the bleeding stop? If the retail division gets sold off, is that the end or is there more to come?

How much more can WOTC bleed out..... and what does it mean for the future?

Comments?

It means that someone at Wizards has a higher wisdom score than intelligence. Creating the open gaming license allows for the complete and utter collapse of Wizards and the game will continue on. It's a brilliant move in my mind. I say let WotC fall - the world will only lose the evil that is Magic the Gathering. Roleplayers will then be buying products from roleplayers and not corporate stooges. We have solid companies like Kenzer and AEG to give us the goods. We have smaller companies making stuff just as good in Green Ronin, Otherworld Creations, Avalanche Press, and (dare I say it) White Wolf. We still have the superlative talents of the game designers, they just need to find new trees to nest in. Wizards has given us all the books we need and I for one won't miss them.