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Wizard's Future Plans Has 3 Big Problems: Ft. The Professor of Tolarion Community College
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<blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 8927246" data-attributes="member: 7035894"><p>This is by design.</p><p></p><p>This issue is discussed at length in <em>Slaying the Dragon,</em> including numerous interviews with WotC's leaders from when they took over D&D. WotC did a deep analysis of TSR's books and discovered that a central problem was that they had been fracturing their brand. During the 2e era, the game relied more and more on generating short term income by churning out various distinct settings and subsystems, to the extent that, as their research showed, people stopped being D&D players and became <em>Dark Sun</em> players or <em>Forgotten Realms</em> players or <em>Planescape </em>players<em>,</em> etc. This is not speculation; WotC ran all the numbers to try to figure out how to avoid TSR's mistakes.</p><p></p><p>What they discovered was that most of these lines were not profitable <em>and could never be profitable</em>. TSR was effectively competing with itself by dividing its own customer base into rival camps and then selling them expensively produced books that the divided fan base couldn't sustain. The books were just piling up in a warehouse and TSR's debt to Random House grew until the company was doomed.</p><p></p><p>The lesson WotC took was not to create settings that become separate lines unto themselves. Everything has to work as an extension of the core game, with the idea that any DM could imagine working <em>Spelljammer,</em> <em>Frostmaiden,</em> or whatever into their games. WotC is happy to let 3PP make those separate setting systems while keeping their own focus on the core brand.</p><p></p><p>That's why you either won't see <em>Dark Sun</em> as an official D&D setting for 5e/One, or if you do, it'll be a very reduced version like <em>Spelljammer.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Clint_L, post: 8927246, member: 7035894"] This is by design. This issue is discussed at length in [I]Slaying the Dragon,[/I] including numerous interviews with WotC's leaders from when they took over D&D. WotC did a deep analysis of TSR's books and discovered that a central problem was that they had been fracturing their brand. During the 2e era, the game relied more and more on generating short term income by churning out various distinct settings and subsystems, to the extent that, as their research showed, people stopped being D&D players and became [I]Dark Sun[/I] players or [I]Forgotten Realms[/I] players or [I]Planescape [/I]players[I],[/I] etc. This is not speculation; WotC ran all the numbers to try to figure out how to avoid TSR's mistakes. What they discovered was that most of these lines were not profitable [I]and could never be profitable[/I]. TSR was effectively competing with itself by dividing its own customer base into rival camps and then selling them expensively produced books that the divided fan base couldn't sustain. The books were just piling up in a warehouse and TSR's debt to Random House grew until the company was doomed. The lesson WotC took was not to create settings that become separate lines unto themselves. Everything has to work as an extension of the core game, with the idea that any DM could imagine working [I]Spelljammer,[/I] [I]Frostmaiden,[/I] or whatever into their games. WotC is happy to let 3PP make those separate setting systems while keeping their own focus on the core brand. That's why you either won't see [I]Dark Sun[/I] as an official D&D setting for 5e/One, or if you do, it'll be a very reduced version like [I]Spelljammer.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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