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.

 

[Aaron L]

While we're talking about olden times of D&D, I've just got to admit that every time I see Parmander's name I keep thinking it says "Paramander," which is the name of an alternate True Neutral Paladin from a 1st Edition/Unearthed Arcana-era article in Dragon years and years ago. ("A Plethora of Paladins" issue #106.) It's a pretty interesting article containing alternate takes on the Paladins for every Alignment. Some of the names were just fantastic; as mentioned, the True Neutral was the Paramander, and the Lawful Evil was the Illrigger.

It was much more than just taking the standard class abilities of the Paladin and shifting them to match alternate Alignments; each new class is pretty drastically different, with custom class abilities tailored to match the ethos of each Alignment, and even giving different Hit Dice and spell progressions to some of the Alternate Paladin types, with some of them being more dedicated spellcasters than others, and the article even has a load of new spells for them.

I've seen various updates to those classes pop-up online every so often over the years as new Editions come out and people want to try to re-create them for the latest ruleset, but I haven't seen a 5E take on them yet, which could be pretty cool. It'd be a great article to look up and read through to get some ideas (I've got most of Dragon in .pdf from the Dragon Magazine Archive CD set from the late '90s, still proving its worth 25 years later.)

 

[Stormonu]

WotC I think has the ignominious distinction of distributing the highest number of different versions of the main game, each for the shortest periods of time. Gygax and even Williams only ever distributed 1 version a piece, as I recall and they were at least largely compatible with each other - whatever the relative merits of their distinctions. I'm not sure that is something to be proud of but then all of the generations of my family in living memory bought and still buy Original Coke, so what do I know. Maybe its just an unusual family oddity.

You have blithfully disregarded the existance of OD&D, BECMI, 1E, Unearthed Arcana (1.5E), 2E, and Player’s Option (2.5E). Let’s not forget there’s been half a dozen iterations of Basic all by itself.

Cling to your “Hobbit” if you so choose, but I refuse to be maligned because I enjoy the Lord of the Rings add-on or that silly Simarillion and Lost Tales that came later.

 

[Ace of Shadows]

You have blithfully disregarded the existance of OD&D, BECMI, 1E, Unearthed Arcana (1.5E), 2E, and Player’s Option (2.5E). Let’s not forget there’s been half a dozen iterations of Basic all by itself.

Cling to your “Hobbit” if you so choose, but I refuse to be maligned because I enjoy the Lord of the Rings add-on or that silly Simarillion and Lost Tales that came later.

Maybe the subtlety of my references to a library of largely compatible books were lost on you, or it was the subtlety of library itself that was lost on you when it was published at the time, assuming you have actual experience of regularly playing the original advanced and light versions of the game back in the day or since.

If you think the last 4 RPGs produced by WotC are mutually compatible add-ons forming part of a greater whole and any book from the series is capable of use in the current iteration, I wonder if you ever actually read the earlier systems let alone regularly played any of them.

For what its worth I agree they are all RPGs that share the common ground of having exploited the same brand name at different times but there the semantics end.

I'm not criticising the taste of those who chose to play any particular disposable version of the game or even the wisdom of those who pay into successive iterations of 'crunch' that the owners plan to seasonally junk and rewrite in relative short order. Your system taste and how you chose to spend your cash is your own business.

My comments were reserved solely for the 'bean-counters' who chose to prey on customers in such transparent fashion rather than maintain support in game systems once the 'crunch' has been invested in by their customers. My point to them is a simple one - its nothing to be proud of that over 23 years you built up a publishing brand name that is now famous amongst hardcore gamers for making a succession of disposable RPG rulebooks, and fore-knowledge of that reputation is being passed on by hardcore gamers to their progeny when they teach them the game - you know the next generation of potential customers are being forewarned what to expect from you.

Yes I read the Hobbit, the Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers and the Return of the King - you know that's the single main story broken into four volumes, right?

My son has read them too because I recommended them to him, knowing they still read the same way as when I last read them - and I had no problem buying him his own copies so we would have a shared common experience to talk about. And then I introduced him to the RPGs that I play and warned him about the market so when he comes to spend his own money one day he is equipped to do so wisely, just as I did. You see that is the important bit, in families - continuity and shared common experiences easily had from generation to generation and the passing down of knowledge to your children.

 

[Parmandur]

the subtlety of library

And in a world first, we have the Gygaxian corpus referred to as "subtle".

 

[Parmandur]

While we're talking about olden times of D&D, I've just got to admit that every time I see Parmander's name I keep thinking it says "Paramander," which is the name of an alternate True Neutral Paladin from a 1st Edition/Unearthed Arcana-era article in Dragon years and years ago. ("A Plethora of Paladins" issue #106.) It's a pretty interesting article containing alternate takes on the Paladins for every Alignment. Some of the names were just fantastic; as mentioned, the True Neutral was the Paramander, and the Lawful Evil was the Illrigger.

It was much more than just taking the standard class abilities of the Paladin and shifting them to match alternate Alignments; each new class is pretty drastically different, with custom class abilities tailored to match the ethos of each Alignment, and even giving different Hit Dice and spell progressions to some of the Alternate Paladin types, with some of them being more dedicated spellcasters than others, and the article even has a load of new spells for them.

I've seen various updates to those classes pop-up online every so often over the years as new Editions come out and people want to try to re-create them for the latest ruleset, but I haven't seen a 5E take on them yet, which could be pretty cool. It'd be a great article to look up and read through to get some ideas (I've got most of Dragon in .pdf from the Dragon Magazine Archive CD set from the late '90s, still proving its worth 25 years later.)

Very interesting: my moniker is a Quenya compound name (because that's the sort of geek I am), no relation to that article.

 

[Jaeger]

I'll never forget Sean Reynolds "Forgotten Rum" story about what went on behind closed doors for D&D's future.

Mr. Reynolds seems to have repented of his thinly veiled bean-counter allegories when after 12 years away he willingly went back to the steadily paying arms of WOTC...

I think D&D would have been way better had WotC not been tied down by Hasbro.

Hard to say. Given that Reynolds seemed to have forgotten all about his rum, I think that Hasbro "policies" have served as a needed practical minded check to RPG designers fantastical whimsy.

When WOTC let Johnathan Tweet cut loose with his impressive CV and no oversight - they got: The Everway RPG...

WOTC didn't produce anything that took the RPG world by storm until they Bought D&D.

5E is a pretty darn good critical & commercial success. Its really hard to play "What If...". If Hasbro didn't own WotC would 4E have sunk the IP? Would Paizo have bought the IP?

No Way. Magic money would have bailed them out of the 4e debacle.

Now it is hard to say when 5e would have come out, and how different it might have been. Hasbro jerked WOTC's chain pretty hard, and who knows how involved they were in the hiring and firing that put Mearls in charge of 5e.

If WOTC was still independent at that time they may have reacted differently. But we may likely never know because even years later no one is dishing the real inside scoop on the internal fallout of 4e getting beaten by a clone.

Kind of puts to rest grognards complaining about the TSR days as WOTC has produced 3 editions that outsold AD&D 2e and maintained the profitability of D&D the whole time span (in spite of some edition warring)/

True.

But it is a bit of a "what if" with as much as 4e whiffed it; what would WOTC have done without Hasbro bucks or Magic money to backstop their misstep?

There are no know plans for a sci-fi, a post-apocalyptic or a modern version of 5e. I has been said Hasbro/WoTC doesn't want to slipt the consumer base into spin off 5e games.

If wishes were fishes the one exception to that policy I would make is a not-Call of Cthulhu RPG.

The 5e based "Cthulhu-Rising RPG" would do near everything the BRP CoC rpg does with a streamlined 5e d20 rules set.

I think that there is money on the table there for the grabbing. But realistically it's probably still not enough for WOTC to chase.

I am surprised with a d20 version of Hasbro franchises, but I wonder why that work for an outsourcer company, Renegade Game Studios and not by the own WotC team.

Risk.

The other properties will never bring in what D&D can. Not worth the in-house resource investment.

Offload the majority of the risk and collect royalty fees if they sell.

 

[teitan]

Mr. Reynolds seems to have repented of his thinly veiled bean-counter allegories when after 12 years away he willingly went back to the steadily paying arms of WOTC...

Or it was because it was a different company and was no longer as tightly overseen by bean counters, note he also left very quickly and joined Monte, who also came back and left quickly, at Monte Cook Games. Originally he was laid off from WOTC and didn't leave of his own accord.

 

[Ace of Shadows]

And in a world first, we have the Gygaxian corpus referred to as "subtle".

Well maybe I'm was making a kind allowance for the previous poster's obtuse system analysis of the organic but homogenous modular expansions to the original light and advanced versions of D&D, or it could be recognition of unsubtle sarcasm is a lost art these days.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The true owner(s) of that trademark and the associated copyrights are the human beneficial owners of the majority shareholdings of whichever parent company controls WotC from time to time - not some company where the asset is notionally parked in a corporate veil from time to time.

Of course. when it comes to chest-beating, how long you have possessed such assets is only relevant to count the years you have spent successfully selling individual copyright materials associated with the brand to successive generations of mankind.

The real measure of a successful book of any stripe, is your ability to keep selling the same publication and any associated library of publications to successive generations, without needing to completely re-write the entire book or its associated library every 6 years - because its been decided by the owner that that version of the game is now junk.

Clearly, success is not measured by how much time you have wasted on producing unreliable experimental books that become redundant and disposable every 6 years whilst you try to find such a reliable and successful publication, whose usefulness to consumers survives from one generation to the next - like any fine book or fine library of books should.

The more time you have wasted on this search and the more disposable versions you produced trying to find such a winning antiquarian formulae, the more embarrassing your failure to produce such a collection of publications must be ... surely?

I know I would be very embarrassed if I was coming up to to a 6th offering of experimental books in the lifetime of just 1 generation of consumers.

I certainly wouldn't be trumpeting how long I have been at it producing disposable experimental rule systems for a kind of game whose main selling point is that it is capable of being played for whole lifetimes and from one family generation to the next .... as it turns out.

WotC I think has the ignominious distinction of distributing the highest number of different versions of the main game, each for the shortest periods of time. Gygax and even Williams only ever distributed 1 version a piece, as I recall and they were at least largely compatible with each other - whatever the relative merits of their distinctions. I'm not sure that is something to be proud of but then all of the generations of my family in living memory bought and still buy Original Coke, so what do I know. Maybe its just an unusual family oddity.

Is that the anniversary clarion call to announce a 6th 'version' of 'the game' I hear rumblings of? You know calling it an 'edition' when its a complete re-write is not really correct English but ah well back to 'editing', eh.

Gygax and Williams both maintained a "Basic D&D" side by side with an "Advanced" D&D. This is particularly odious when it seems the reason to keep them separate (not the original plan) was to deny Dave Arneson royalties.

I'd say 5E and 3E are almost as compatible as AD&D 1st, AD&D 2nd and Basic D&D to be honest.

 

[teitan]

Gygax and Williams both maintained a "Basic D&D" side by side with an "Advanced" D&D. This is particularly odious when it seems the reason to keep them separate (not the original plan) was to deny Dave Arneson royalties.

I'd say 5E and 3E are almost as compatible as AD&D 1st, AD&D 2nd and Basic D&D to be honest.

I’ll say the opposite because 5e is more compatible, well, eat to convert to from 1-2e & Basic and than 3e to 5e or 3e to 1-2e. Sure you can but with it’s simpler chassis designed specifically to be easy to convert older materials to, 5e trumps 3e era. 4e is just an entirely different game.