Worried that the mistakes of the past are being repeated...

[Dr. Harry]

There's a large difference between "WotC Goes Out Of Business" and "No New Gaming Material". If there's a demand for this stuff, somebody will make it. If WotC does a crappy job, somebody will do a better. White Wolf could be said to owe much of its current market position to the timing of its products and the decline of TSR. So worrying about Wizards' business practices is very different from worrying about the health of the industry.


Even the fact that Wizards represents the largest share of the market doesn't make those two ideas congruent.

WotC/Hasbro has massive market access. If WotC went down, maybe White Wolf could cover much (but not nearly all) of the same market. WotC/Hasbro also has the capital to invest in large print runs that will sell over time, at a level that would drive a smaller game publisher out of business before the full profit could be attained.

Even when Wizards was making its crappiest stuff, and when others are making their best, WotC was still by far the largest kid in the schoolyard.

Again, if Wizards drops the ball, there's no shortage of hungry, ambitious publishers looking for a chance to increase their market share. You don't have to worry that the hobby will wither and die just because one publisher screws up.

What would the next publisher do? Keep the old material in print? While there is (I expect) some constant level of sales for the core books, most of the profit is realized soon after publication. I would guess at either the old edition repackaged in as cheap as form as possible, or a new edition to infuse cash into the company.

I cannot envision any company able to maintain the D&D brand at anything like the level of visibility that it has right now.

That's like worrying that if General Motors falls over, people will stop driving.

There are strong economic competitive advantages to driving that do not exist in a purely leisure activity like RPG's.

I don't think that the hobby would end, but I think that it would shrink dramatically at the lower level of support and production another company would be able to give it.

 

[moritheil]

Finally, if WotC's didn't publish further books that were "needless accessories," what would you have them put out? Not releasing any books isn't an option, and releasing books that are absolutely necessary to run the game would upset the fans much more quickly than "needless" books. This is to say nothing of the fact that having virtually all of their accessory books be almost completely modular (e.g. you don't need Races of Stone to use Stormwrack).

I think WotC's current policy is a good one, and that they're not doing anything that's hurting the market.

Movies, an animated series, and fiction books. Gamer culture, particularly pen-and-paper gamer culture, has yet to become mainstream, and I think they have the best shot of anyone to push for it. I think that the benefits of such a culture shift would be huge. But they aren't doing that, because it apparently doesn't have clear profit potential as predicted by whoever is in charge of their corporate vision.

I don't think that releasing more sourcebooks is mandatory for them, as the above methods could be made lucrative, and they have card games in addition to their book sales. I would rather they do things like fix their FAQ (wildly incorrect, at times, as documented here on the forums), train their help staff to actually be able to correctly answer questions, and get more uniformly competent writers, before releasing more sourcebooks.

But then, everyone's a critic.

 

[Banshee16]

The numbers to fear are 4 8 15 16 23 42.

That there's *crazy* talk...

Banshee

 

[kikai]

For me, not using is different to not owning. I own a lot Books (some collector-tendency), but the fewest see more use than flipping through.

And I like the Environment-Series, the Complete-Series, the (concept of) Heroes of Horror, and so forth. For me, eveything is fine.

Regards ,

kikai!

 

[Cartigan Mrryl]

This could just be me, but besies the core role books and prestige class books all I ever really needed was the Draconomicon supplement, I guess that's because the world that my character's are in is run by Dragons though, so if that should change, I guess I'll need more.

 

[barsoomcore]

Even when Wizards was making its crappiest stuff, and when others are making their best, WotC was still by far the largest kid in the schoolyard.

As I said, this isn't relevant to the question of should we be worried if WotC makes bad business decisions. If they do a bad job of selling their product, other companies will do a better job. If they do a bad enough job and lose money, they won't want to hang on to the D&D brand and will sell it to somebody else. That somebody will do something with it.

What would the next publisher do? Keep the old material in print?

I'm beginning to think you're having a different conversation than I am.

I cannot envision any company able to maintain the D&D brand at anything like the level of visibility that it has right now... (snip) I don't think that the hobby would end, but I think that it would shrink dramatically at the lower level of support and production another company would be able to give it.

Huh? Does WotC have some secret ingredient that no other company in the world has? If one company can make the "D&D" brand work for them, why couldn't another? There's nothing magic about WotC as far as I know -- I don't see any reason why some other company would necessarily have to provide lower levels of support and production.

 

[Dr. Harry]

As I said, this isn't relevant to the question of should we be worried if WotC makes bad business decisions. If they do a bad job of selling their product, other companies will do a better job. If they do a bad enough job and lose money, they won't want to hang on to the D&D brand and will sell it to somebody else. That somebody will do something with it.

Go into a bookstore, not a gaming store, but a bookstore. The vast majority of the game books you will almost certainly find are WotC. D&D (at the level of production that it has maintained, especially after 3E) has opened up the doors to a lot of smaller publishers now having their product before the public, primarily because the larger sell numbers of the D&D books has made "Gaming", as a section, profitable enough to get its own section of valuable floor space.

If WotC went down right now, do you think that these stores would simply call up even first rate smaller companies like Green Ronin or Expeditious Retreat, and say, "Hey, we have more shelf space, send us more stuff"?

Huh? Does WotC have some secret ingredient that no other company in the world has? If one company can make the "D&D" brand work for them, why couldn't another? There's nothing magic about WotC as far as I know -- I don't see any reason why some other company would necessarily have to provide lower levels of support and production.

WotC has the size and the cash resources to print large enough print runs to widely stock bookstores, and the company is large enough that it will not cripple thier cash flow if those copies are not all sold in the first 30-90 days.

We are having a different conversation if you think anyone is talking about WotC "magic"

It takes a lot of money to pay for a large print run, and the money has to be paid (in general, and especially for small publishers) before any money is made from the sale of the material.

How would you propose that a small company print the bigger print runs, like say the initial print runs for the core books? Maybe White Wolf could do it, but even the largest third-party publishers have much smaller print runs than the WotC books.

Where woould the new company make the money to pay for all of these things? WotC, even before being purchased by Hasbro, had certain economies of scale that made providing benefits for some group of ten workers cheaper than a small company providing the same benefits for the same workers.

Please explain how it is that you don't see any reason why some other company would provide the same levels of support and production - I could only see this if the new company has the size and finances of WotC. Where is a smaller company going to get the money to support the same level of print runs, and the same rate of new product release?

 

[ThirdWizard]

As I said, this isn't relevant to the question of should we be worried if WotC makes bad business decisions. If they do a bad job of selling their product, other companies will do a better job. If they do a bad enough job and lose money, they won't want to hang on to the D&D brand and will sell it to somebody else. That somebody will do something with it.

Lets not kid ourselves here. We got lucky. Not many companies out there both have the capital to both purchase the D&D license and the ability to maintain a decent level of quality. WotC was in the right place at the right time, and had they not been, D&D might be a line of novels and video games, with no PnP form in print right now.

There is no rule that just because one company does poorly, another company will pick up the slack. I wish there were, but if WotC failed right now I don't know who would pick it up. I don't think they're going to fail. They're a great company with a long life ahead of them as far as I can tell. I don't think there's a line of companies as good as them sitting and waiting to pick up the slack should they find the opportunity, though.

Would that be the end of PnP? Would it be the end of D&D? No. People still play out of print games. OD&D isn't dead. 1st Edition D&D isn't dead. 2nd Edition D&D isn't dead. And, 3rd Edition D&D isn't dead. But, the vast majority of people would move on to other games, perhaps Vampire that is being produced, because most likely we wouldn't be seeing anything new for quite a while.

 

[helium3]

9 our of 10 gamers will rarely if ever use (Races of Stone, Stormwrack, etc.), so I'm starting to get a bad feeling.

Many of the players in our group have used the goliath race for characters and I know that the DM drew heavily from the material on Dwarves when putting together his setting that was somewhat Dwarf-centric.

Perhaps we're an oddity but I suspect that's not the case. As for Stormwrack, there's some interesting stuff in there but I don't yet know what I'll use. Still, I think the terrain books are great stuff if you're a DM.

In fact, our group has utilized the "splatbooks" in one fashion or another and probably the only ones that never got any use were the Book of Exalted deeds and maybe the Miniatures Handbook. Most of the MHB was either duplicated in the Complete Warrior or was related to gaming with Minis (and while our group uses minis, we don't use them exclusively for gaming in the way WoTC intended) and the Book of Exalted deeds was IMO too wishy washy. In D&D, being good is about smiting evil, not prancing around with Unicorns.

 

[barsoomcore]

Please explain how it is that you don't see any reason why some other company would provide the same levels of support and production - I could only see this if the new company has the size and finances of WotC.

Sorry, what's the question? I mean, what's the question that didn't just get answered?

Where is a smaller company going to get the money to support the same level of print runs, and the same rate of new product release?

Obviously, a smaller company couldn't. You'll note that nowhere did I say a smaller company would.

This is why I think we're having different conversations.

You seem to be talking about how WotC is the largest company publishing PnP RPG products. With this I have no argument.

But you seem to deduce from that the notion that if WotC does a bad job selling their product, the industry is doomed.

Let me try again.

There is a certain level of demand for RPG books. Currently, WotC meets the majority of that demand. Should they do a bad job of meeting that demand, other publishers will step in to fill the void. This is how every other industry in the world operates. I fail to see what "magic" WotC possesses that makes it irreplaceable.

WotC publishes large numbers of books in large print runs because they make money doing so. If they were not doing so, would people just, you know, buy less RPG books? I hardly think so. They'd buy OTHER RPG books. Now, WotC does possess (currently) the most valuable brand in RPGs. My whole argument is predicated on the notion that they screw things up badly enough that the brand becomes less valuable and so gets acquired by someone else. Eventually it will be acquired by somebody smart enough to build it up. Or else a new brand will come along that we can't now foresee.

These things happen in all industries, in all markets. I don't believe RPGs are special. The level of demand can fluctuate, but the demand exists, and if one company won't take advantage of it, another will. I don't think there's anything very complicated or controversial about this idea.