WotC: Goodbye, Loren Greenwood, hello Greg Leeds

[Desdichado]

My opinion is based on watching and dealing with management types for twenty-four years.

If your experience is different I would love to hear it. Mine has shown that a company succeeds in spite of its management, not because of it. That the people who do things actually handle the running of the place. Management a pretty much just figureheads. Highly paid figureheads mind you. But figureheads.

My experience? My experience is that I have an MBA.

Oh... Whoops! Didn't think those boneheaded blatant insults you made earlier might possibly apply to a person who was a gamer too or something? Or just didn't care?

Businessmen don't always run a good business and non-businessmen can be successful. But your anecdotal experience to the contrary, actually knowing about how business works tends to make one better at running a business. I could show you hundreds of case studies where "MBAs" ran a business successfully and people involved in the product had no idea how to do so.

 

[Greylock]

I can't see how D&D would be any different at all. They've made virtually no use of the third-party innovations and variants to their system... About the only innovative thing you could point to would be M&M/True20.

I can only figure that you are using an very narrow definition of "innovations and variants". It's been obvious to me, and a few of my friends I sit around and yak with in real life, that as soon as a company like Green Ronin or such came up with an interesting "must-use" rule or variant it would soon appear in the next, sometimes appropriate, Wizards splat book.

 

[WayneLigon]

I can only figure that you are using an very narrow definition of "innovations and variants". It's been obvious to me, and a few of my friends I sit around and yak with in real life, that as soon as a company like Green Ronin or such came up with an interesting "must-use" rule or variant it would soon appear in the next, sometimes appropriate, Wizards splat book.

I wish someone would list them, then, because I can't recall a single adoption from a third-party source and I have a good chunk of the more important or popular ones. About the closest I've ever seen was an article in Dragon about how to use Arcana Unearthed spell templates in base 3.0.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I think that D&D would no longer be a viable brand name without the advent of the OGL. In fact, I think that it would no longer be in print. At the time WotC acquired D&D from TSR, it had been accumulating debt, not profit, which is why TSR was in the hole and WotC inherited that huge warehouse full of unsold product dating back to 1977. People who think that D&D was doing "just fine" without the intervention of WotC and their brave, new, marketing model are living in a fantasy world all their own. Before WotC acquired D&D, both its former publisher and the brand name were on life support.

Those two things (the OGL and WoTC taking over D&D) don't really have anything to do with one another. I think D&D would be fine under WoTC even without the d20 license and the OGL.

 

[jdrakeh]

I can't see how D&D would be any different at all. They've made virtually no use of the third-party innovations and variants to their system.

You're making a fundamental error in assuming that the purpose of the OGL was to open up 3rd party material to WotC. As has been discussed ad-nauseum by Ryan Dancey and other WotC employees circa 2000, the purpose of the OGL and STL licenses were to drive D&D core book sales, reviving the name-brand recognition of D&D after TSR's nearly successful attempts to murder it outright. In that regard, the OGL and STL licenses were a rousing success -- they kept D&D alive and propelled it to heights that it hadn't seen since the late 1970s in terms of earning potential.

 

[jdrakeh]

Those two things (the OGL and WoTC taking over D&D) don't really have anything to do with one another.

Yes, they do. See my post above, then do some Google searches on early essays about the purpose of the OGL/STL licenses, the state of the D&D brand name when acquired by WotC, and how both of those things are very closely related to one another.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You're making a fundamental error in assuming that the purpose of the OGL was to open up 3rd party material to WotC. As has been discussed ad-nauseum by Ryan Dancey and other WotC employees circa 2000, the purpose of the OGL and STL licenses were to drive D&D core book sales, reviving the name-brand recognition of D&D after TSR's nearly successful attempts to murder it outright. In that regard, the OGL and STL licenses were a rousing success -- they kept D&D alive and propelled it to heights that it hadn't seen since the late 1970s in terms of earning potential.

But did this work out? I suppose it did. Does it still work out?
There have been a few core rule books based on the d20 systems by now, that definitely do no longer require any of the core rulebooks. Spycraft, Arcana Evolved, Iron Heroes, Conan, True20, they all stand on it own. (AE and IH might still prompt people to pick up the Monster Manuals). And I think that's why WotC is aiming for a "tighter" license for 4E.
A license that supports something like adventures, or Tome of Horrors, but not a license that allows you to build an Iron Heroes 2.0 (if 4E still leaves a need for that).

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Yes, they do. See my post above, then do some Google searches on early essays about the purpose of the OGL/STL licenses, the state of the D&D brand name when acquired by WotC, and how both of those things are very closely related to one another.

I've read all that stuff. I certainly agree that the OGL was created to drive sales of 3E Core Books, but I don't agree that without the OGL, D&D wouldn't be a viable brand. I'm not sure how you can measure that one way or the other, so I'm not sure that either one of us can convince the other.

 

[WayneLigon]

You're making a fundamental error in assuming that the purpose of the OGL was to open up 3rd party material to WotC.

That would not be me making that error.

 

[apoptosis]

I completely disagree with you.

I've worked in the biotech industry my entire career. In my experience the best of these companies are the ones where the organization is run by a business person who knows when to direct, when to change direction and when to stay out of the way of the scientists who ultimately supply the value to the company.

Companies where the top scientist is the CEO usually get themselves run into the ground until investors insist on a change.

I want to see WotC run by a person who wants the division to be an important part of Hasbro, knows how to manage the corporate executives at HQ as well as the people at WotC, and lets the gamers who develop and produce the products do their job with minimal interference. I don't know if this guy is the one to do that, but I'm willing to wait and see rather than immediately condemn him for (probably) not being a gamer.

Been in pharma and biotech awhile and have seen many an MBA nonscientist sink many a firms because they assumed they knew how to manage any market, science or therapeutic area. They best guys I have seen have been scientists who have transitioned to marketing (PhD + MBA guys).