D&D General WotC Has Owned D&D Longer Than TSR Did

As Matt Forbeck pointed out on Twitter, WotC has owned D&D for 24 years since it purchased TSR in 1997. TSR created D&D in 1974, 23 years before WotC bought it.

 

[MNblockhead]

And sadly, that game did for the most part.

The name is the same, but the game is not.

Unless, of course, you consider Life and Monopoly the same game...or Chess and Parchesi...or Hearts and Spades and Bridge as the same game...or Texas Hold em and 5 card draw the same game...in which case...more power to you I guess...

As someone who went from OD&D and AD&D and then after a long period of non-gaming started back up with D&D 5e, I'm not buying it. The core of D&D is still there. The spirit is there. It is a different version of the same game, but it is the same game.

 

[Parmandur]

As someone who went from OD&D and AD&D and then after a long period of non-gaming started back up with D&D 5e, I'm not buying it. The core of D&D is still there. The spirit is there. It is a different version of the same game, but it is the same game.

From the other side, as someone who started after Hasbro had bought WotC, looking back at earlier stuff is clearly the same game.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The crunch is like the videogames, getting old fastly, while the fluff are like the comics or novels, keeping the selling decades after. D&D 3rd was mainly crunch, with lots of spells, magic item, new PC races, prestige classes, feats... and I remember World of Darkness had got a fabulous fluff, but after reading once or twice, not any more. And today in the internet age you haven't to spend money for the fluff when you can read freely fandom wikis, or webcomics.

I guess Hasbro strategy is to create the ultimate crunch, and after the fluff for multimedia franchise. And this can alter the lore or background. For example let's imagine Hasbro hires eOne scripters for a action-live adaptation of Ravenloft. The idea is a movie about a group of innocent children abduted by the dark powers and sent to Odiare, the dark domain of Maligno the carrionete. The main characters survive and come back, but not the "older brother", a bully who wanted to be member of the mafia as his uncle. Maligno uses a experimental ritual with him and this become a doll half-golem. This idea later may become canon in the game. Do you understand? The fluff has to allow enough space to add later new crunch, and the fluff can be designed by novel writters and eOne scripters, not by the Wizards game designers.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The crunch is like the videogames, getting old fastly, while the fluff are like the comics or novels, keeping the selling decades after. D&D 3rd was mainly crunch, with lots of spells, magic item, new PC races, prestige classes, feats... and I remember World of Darkness had got a fabulous fluff, but after reading once or twice, not any more. And today in the internet age you haven't to spend money for the fluff when you can read freely fandom wikis, or webcomics.

I guess Hasbro strategy is to create the ultimate crunch, and after the fluff for multimedia franchise. And this can alter the lore or background. For example let's imagine Hasbro hires eOne scripters for a action-live adaptation of Ravenloft. The idea is a movie about a group of innocent children abduted by the dark powers and sent to Odiare, the dark domain of Maligno the carrionete. The main characters survive and come back, but not the "older brother", a bully who wanted to be member of the mafia as his uncle. Maligno uses a experimental ritual with him and this become a doll half-golem. This idea later may become canon in the game. Do you understand? The fluff has to allow enough space to add later new crunch, and the fluff can be designed by novel writters and eOne scripters, not by the Wizards game designers.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I say today WotC strategy is more focused into the "crunch", the powers, magic item, spells... and not the fluff, the background or lore, but this may change in the future when others projects start. Hasbro wants D&D to be a multimedia franchise, this means selling different products: comics, books, toys, shirts, merchandising, videogames. The lore of the TTRPG can be chosen by the scripters of the media-productions and videogames.

I mentioned Maligno and Odiare, a dread domain from Ravenloft setting, as an example for a hipotetical action-live adaptation based in Ravenloft but not too mature.

 

[Guest 6948803]

There are different kinds of fluff.
D&D fluff used to be like pretty pictures (all those detailed regional books).
Now they are selling us mainly coloring books. Detailed and intricate but waiting to be filled with color.
I have to say, it won me over.

 

[dave2008]

It's always weird to me how people confuse popularity and sales with quality.

Equally funny how people confuse what they like personally with quality.

 

[dave2008]

As someone who went from OD&D and AD&D and then after a long period of non-gaming started back up with D&D 5e, I'm not buying it. The core of D&D is still there. The spirit is there. It is a different version of the same game, but it is the same game.

I agree and feel the same, except it was 4e that brought me back and I believe it also has: "The core of D&D is still there. The spirit is there. It is a different version of the same game, but it is the same game."

 

[Ulfgeir]

Honestly, this freaks me out a lot less than the realization, three years ago, that we had passed the point when the Berlin Wall had been gone longer than it had been up.

Never thought of that. I did my military service the year after it fell. Now I am feeling old.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Correction, HASBRO owned it longer (than both). And lot of good that did. I think D&D would have been way better had WotC not been tied down by Hasbro. I'll never forget Sean Reynolds "Forgotten Rum" story about what went on behind closed doors for D&D's future.

Can you give us some details about? How it is ended with Silver Munches?