WotC Wizard's Future Plans Has 3 Big Problems: Ft. The Professor of Tolarion Community College

[Reynard]

Heh you don't have to like the YouTubers but you must be living under a rock last 15 years not to realize they exist. They're not really influencers in the traditional sense.

If WotC screws up again a'la 4E that edition war is nothing compared to what would happen now.

I think their role has changed to be more like influencers recently. The ones that actually talk about RPGing are often very good, or at least interesting. But the ones that talk about the culture of gaming or the state of the industry -- no thank you.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think their role has changed to be more like influencers recently. The ones that actually talk about RPGing are often very good, or at least interesting. But the ones that talk about the culture of gaming or the state of the industry -- no thank you.

You do realize WotC actions got them talking about the state of things vs the game.

Tolarian Academy is more MtG bit WotC actions once again have screwed over people.

IDK if you were aware but WotC has been mass printing the product and dumping it on Amazon for less than what distributors can source it (apparently).



So yeah the backlash against WotC has been building for years.

 

[Stormonu]

Calling the Spelljammer setting material light is a gross overstatement. Once you get past the races, subclasses, backgrounds, etc. that aren't setting, and past all the ship pictures and info, which also isn't setting, you have less than 10 pages of setting material in the setting book and 6 of those are the Rock of Braal and 1 or 2 are the astral sea.

Light setting material would have been a huge step up from what we got.

You make even the above sound like that was a fair amount of material, which it wasn't. Two backgrounds that equate to "hey, you're from space", and five races (two of which had been covered elsewhere already, and a 3rd that was a tweak to Warforged). Not a sign of the dracon race from the original set.

It's what we were missing that is glaring - decent ship to ship combat instead of a phoned-in effort at TOM, generation charts for Wildspace systems, actual exploration advice or systems. We got more rules for fishing than discussion about exploration or what is out there in Wildspace. Answer me this simple question - how do you avoid or intercept another ship in Wildspace? How far away do you detect another Wildspace vessel or even chase it? Top it off with the ability for a cantrip (Mend) to take care of all your ship fixing needs - who needs dry docks or shipbuilding yards anyway with that cantrip?

 

[bedir than]

You do realize WotC actions got them talking about the state of things vs the game.

DnD Shorts admitted to fabricating and misrepresenting quotes and then claimed that they had exchanged seven novels worth of conversations with multiple sources in less than two weeks.

WotC's actions aren't responsible for that grade of lying and deceit for clout

 

[Zardnaar]

DnD Shorts admitted to fabricating and misrepresenting quotes and then claimed that they had exchanged seven novels worth of conversations with multiple sources in less than two weeks.

WotC's actions aren't responsible for that grade of lying and deceit for clout

I don't really watch him just basically Dungeon Dudes.

YouTube D&D not really my thing but yeah it blew up enough on the algorithm. He's only one of around ten I watched.

 

[Iosue]

The complete books didn't have a lot of crunch in them. The vast majority of it was just lore. Monster mythology was just Deities and Demigods for non-human gods, but I will count that one. And the options books put out right before the end in an effort to save TSR were mostly junk and too late.

For most of 2e(until the options books near the end), virtually all the crunch was in the core books. The settings were where that edition was

The Complete [Character Class] Handbooks were just about all crunch, with loads of class kits, new rules, new spells, and items. What you're saying doesn't track at all.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

DnD Shorts admitted to fabricating and misrepresenting quotes and then claimed that they had exchanged seven novels worth of conversations with multiple sources in less than two weeks.

WotC's actions aren't responsible for that grade of lying and deceit for clout

Which is why influencers are so harmful. There isn't even the most basic level of journalistic integrity.

I've had scientific papers published. Before I was allowed to share my theories I needed to go through six years university education, extensive fact checking, and peer review.

 

[teitan]

Is there a tldr version?

Quality has been going down since Tasha's imho people didn't notice as much until Spelljammer.

Fizban's is great. Was Ravenloft before or after Tasha's because I love Ravenloft. I can't think of anything except Spelljammer I didn't like but Strixhaven, and my wife likes it.

 

[M_Natas]

Fizban's is great. Was Ravenloft before or after Tasha's because I love Ravenloft. I can't think of anything except Spelljammer I didn't like but Strixhaven, and my wife likes it.

There is some other stuff, like the terrain case and creature token case that we're released recently and are just very expensive garbage, where even WotC earlier products are way better and give you much more for the money ...

 

[teitan]

A lot of people talk about the quality of WotC products.

I really don't feel that it wasn't until Spelljammer that quality finally went off a cliff. And that's because I think that Radiant CItadel marked an increase in quality, one that left me hopeful, as did the new monster designs in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse (or w/e its called). Likewise, the Dragonlance book was a pretty decent adventure! Its a railroad, but it is intended to be a railroad, and the adventure has fun epic moments, is greater for beginners and veterans, and presents Dragonlance is a fun, one-off way.

Ultimately, though, Spelljammer denotes something that I think is a little worse, which is, WotC really doesn't like developing new rules. They hate making subsystems, and they hate making additions to their current systems. They do so a little bit, but they are so restrained that you end up with maybe a subclass, some feats at level 1 (this takes no designer skill whatsoever to come up with), and so on.

I don't think the designers of 5E are unskilled by any means. I like 5E's core. I like some of their additional mechanics, especially those in Van Richten's (the survivor and sanity mechanics are favorites of mine). But, the company's design philosophy is to keep to a certain status quo, and only over 10 years begin changing that status quo as they lead up to a new edition. I think this is a little too conservative, and that books that are meant to explore mechanics end up being lesser quality because of it.

Beyond Xanathar's, mechanical additions from WotC have been controversial. The ship fighting rules in Saltmarsh are mediocre and fail to make it into Spelljammer, who instead uses even worse, more controversial rules. Most of the rules in the DMG that are variants never get added to other systems; instead, they get phased out and replaced with more streamlined versions (not all bad, not all good). Many non-controversial options also never get talked about. The evolving magic items in Fizban's, for example, or the aforementioned Survivor rules. Because they don't get talked about, they get forgotten in online discourse, and so the conversation remains that quality is dropping.

But is it? I don't think so. I just think the conservative philosophy of WotC's design process means their end-of-cycle books are weaker. Instead, WotC should have put more effort into making deeper-yet-streamlined mechanics (like evolving items in dragon hoards) instead of phoning it in (like backgrounds in Strixhaven).

I think it is because the design philosophy is that everything is designed to work with the free Basic D&D pdf and you can pick and choose what you add on if you have it without breaking the central system presented in that pdf. It keep D&D accessible without forcing people to spend a lot of money to try it out kind of like the starter set or the Essentials set. That was at least the reason when Mearls was running the brand and I think a wise decision if they are continuing to follow it. That more home games aren't talked about I think is that the other policy of those early days was to emphasize the adventures similarly to 1e where those shared experiences were what built the community.

We didn't have DDB for the first three years of D&D and the community was built on the next season of adventures and its tie ins in video games and even the Driz'zt novels had some aspect of that. The GF9 minis tied into the storylines as well so it was a massive aspect of the first 5-6 years at least and part of why those side rules didn't get talked about.

It created a different sort of culture around the game than we had seen before with the lack of mechanical support as we had gotten in the past. There were people actively saying "you don't need the DMG" even though it's probably up there with the 3.0 DMG in terms of design and usefulness and that 3.0 DMG was pretty close to 1e in how helpful it was to DMs. It was the toolkit that the 2e DMG wanted to be.

So expansions and settings came out and aside from Xanathar and Tasha's people moved on pretty quickly after the hype train dropped off for most of the settings. The SCAG still was the best selling one for a LONG time. With those longer release dates and production schedules people just... moved on and played PHB with Xanathar's.

The quality is definitely still there but it is also, aside from Perkins, different designers with a different head in charge with different priorities. Mearls was very much a solid mechanics guy. Winninger was very much a let's see what works guy and about creativity looking at his history and what was on offer. The new guy? man... I don't know because he is coming in at a really bad time and I don't even know his resume.