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<blockquote data-quote="Jaeger" data-source="post: 8229875" data-attributes="member: 27996">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...Hard to say. Given that Reynolds seemed to have forgotten all about his rum, I think that Hasbro &quot;policies&quot; 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:&nbsp; The Everway RPG... WOTC didn't produce anything that took the RPG world by storm until they Bought D&amp;D.No Way.&nbsp; 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.True. But it is a bit of a &quot;what if&quot; with as much as 4e whiffed it; what would WOTC have done without Hasbro bucks or Magic money to backstop their misstep?If wishes were fishes the one exception to that policy I would make is a not-Call of Cthulhu RPG. The 5e based &quot;Cthulhu-Rising RPG&quot; 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.Risk. The other properties will never bring in what D&amp;D can. Not worth the in-house resource investment. Offload the majority of the risk and collect royalty fees if they sell.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jaeger, post: 8229875, member: 27996"] 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... 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: [I]The[/I] [I]Everway RPG..[/I]. WOTC didn't produce anything that took the RPG world by storm until they [I]Bought[/I] D&D. 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. 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? If wishes were fishes the one exception to that policy I would make is a not-Call of Cthulhu RPG. The 5e based "[I]Cthulhu-Rising RPG[/I]" 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. 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. [/QUOTE]

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