WotC WotC will do what you say for 5 years. What are your instructions?

[Coroc]

What it says in the title. Somehow you have control of WotC for the next five years. They will make whatever D&D products you tell them to. What is your five-year plan?

(They will only make D&D stuff. No silly “give me a million pounds” or “turn into a law textbook company” — you get the spirit of the question.)

- Keep your hands of Greyhawk.

- Publish usable rules for Psionics, also psionic monsters

- Publish rules / conversion rules for Darksun 5e if you do publish some official then do a reset, most young people do not know the old stuff and the older people will love you for that

- Publish rules / conversion rules for Dragonlance if you do publish some official then do a reset, most young people do not know the old stuff and the older people will love you for that

 

[gyor]

I have them publish Guide to Faerun, Guide to Kara Tur, Guide to Zakhara, Guide to Maztica, Guide to Katashaka, Guide to Osse, Guide to the Utter East, Elminister's Guide to Theology, Giant Book of Settings, Encyclopedia of the Forgotten Realms.

 

[Aldarc]

Fire Mike Mearls

 

[gyor]

Fire Mike Mearls

What did he ever do to you?

 

[Aldarc]

What did he ever do to you?

I would prefer not to get into the reasons here, though it is not about what he did to me and more about what he did to others.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Id use the 5 years to set wotc for a massive surge during the 10 years to follow.

Year 1:
A:
Launch team for analyzing parts of all editions best enjoyed and what editions playstyles and concepts could best be lumped together to create multiple different editions at the same time for vastly disparate player groups. This way instead of catering to everyone wotc's new standard can eventually become catering to everyone in a way they can opt into the right system and sensibilities for them or the one that focuses doesnt focus or focuses just enough on the majority of things they care/dont care to focus on (some people really dont care about politics for instance. And you would definitely find a correlation between that type of player and the type of game they best enjoy). This can pertain to playstyle, rule density, myth density, political sensibilities or lack thereof, and many many other things similar or vastly different.
B:
Launch teams for everything older than 2e to clean up rules and streamline just a tiny bit so that the structure can be kept generally the same with obvious improvements made sparingly so that adventures best played in this general structure will be able to start being advanced again and revisited in the style of play they are best suited for. As well as adding new adventures settings classes feats and spell books.
C:
Attempt to curry more favor with online magazines resembling what dungeon and dragon mag used to resemble to increase likelyhood of 3rd parties bolstering creative process without having to spend so much money. Stop threatening people so much with the fiends of copywright.
D: continue advancing 5e same way its going

Year 2:
A:
Continue as before but expand analysis as per B's new inclusions.
B:
Same as 1B but launch teams for same task in concern with all three 2e and 3/3.5e to be analyzed by a similar dedicated joint team.
C:
Same as C1
D:
Same

3:
A:
Same
B:
Same but with 5e content that has been out a while
C:
Same
D:
Same

4:
Alpha:
A-D:
Same
Beta:
Work on beginning to make 3 different simulataneous release editions called the 6th edition triplet releases or 6et. Analyze which countries would best enjoy which of each. Market accordingly but plan for eventual digital and purchaseable print releases of all three in all countries of reasonable market viability with resources spread accordingly to demand.
The triplets will nit be completely just the prior editions clumped together. They will be sibling editions that have had aspects of d&d which play best according to research put together.

5:
Continue advancing all parts discussed prior and start alpha testing triplets with intention that for the next couple years that would likely continue if you have forced wotc this far because at that point they would have to continue so they could get something back out of it. Too deep to pull out. I assume 5 years after i lost this 5 year control either wotc will have sold to a different company (and maybe the ip's would be even more publically accessable if were lucky enough to have that silver lining) or will have a transformation no one ever thought possible (in a good way)

Afterthought:

Publish joke pamphlet online about how pun pun created a 0th layer of baator for foolish dm's who allowed cheese to get way too far out of hand after getting the creators permission. Letting him pen it if he wants. I dont know. shrug

 

[Wolfpack48]

Greyhawk. Canon is everything TSR released by Gygyax and Kuntz for Greyhawk begining with the 1983 boxed set t which covers the Folio and most of Gary's Greyhawk articles including the deities. Also included will be the modules not authored by Gary that he allowed to be set in Greyhawk (e.g. C1, C2, S2). Bring in Rob Kuntz and Gygax's son's as consultants.

I'm liking the direction they took with Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and bundling in classic adventures in 5e, adding newer material, and fleshing out the Greyhawk region seems to work pretty nicely. Books I could see:

Hommlet/Temple of Elemental Evil
The Slaver Series
Tamoachan/Inverness
Drow/Kua-Toa/Demonweb Pits
Barrier Peaks
Tharuzden/Tsojanth

I do agree that if they did a Greyhawk book, it would be best if they left it a fairly blank slate, with just some basic regions defined, and instead provide more advice on "building your own Greyhawk" -- I do believe that that aligns pretty nicely with the author's original intentions for the setting.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If they do Greyhawk, they really need to keep the adventures like they did back then: pretty vague as far as setting goes, and easy to drag and drop into your own campaign worlds. I'd also put a little more effort into encouraging and providing guidelines into campaign development. One of the great things about D&D in the 70s and 80s was how you created your own world. Almost every DM did it. Now? You hardly ever see it.

 

[Jer]

This would be terrible because I would drive their business into the ground.

But if I were King of Wizards for a bit, the things I'd make them do would be:

• Get all of their back catalogue - every single game and novel and other print item that they have the rights to - into the proper PDF form so they can be Print-on-Demand. This includes obscure stuff that nobody except for weirdos like me care about - like the old Amazing Engine books or the DragonQuest RPG. Nothing they own the rights to should ever "go out of print" again.
• Work with the DTRPG folks to develop a print-on-demand option for boxed sets and board games, so they could also release every board game and boxed set they've ever produced as a POD product.
• Release actual OGL SRDs for BECMI, 1e, 2e and 4e so that folks who want to develop for those systems can. Open up DM's guild so that products for those systems can be published there.
• Release "edition neutral" books for every setting they own the rights to. And I mean EVERY setting - including things like Gamma Terra, the Galactic Frontier, Dark*Matter earth, Urban Arcana earth, Star*Drive, all of the Amazing Engine settings and so on. These books should contain the maps, geographic and political info, major NPCs and organizations, plot hooks, and big ideas - all of the stuff you get in a campaign setting book except for the rules. And lots and lots of artwork to get the visual feel of each setting. The more niche ones would be PDF only releases, but the major ones (Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, etc.) would be nicely designed hardcovers. Follow each of them up with a free PDF of rules for using the setting in 5e, and eventual 5e specific companion sourcebook releases for the settings where it makes sense to do so.
• Open up publication for all of those above campaign settings that Wizards still owns the rights to on DM's Guild. Under any edition of the game.
• Produce an updated version of Urban Arcana as a Starter Set to be put onto major retailer shelves. Follow it up with an sourcebook/adventure campaign taking characters to level 10-12.
• Do a search for a new setting. Doesn't have to be a setting search competition like they did for Eberron, but actively work to develop a new setting of some kind.
• Start publishing novels again.
• Produce a boardgame version of D&D that is a simpler game than the Adventure System board games. Something along the lines of the old HeroQuest board game that Hasbro/GW partnered to create in the early 90s, but using D&D rules as the basis instead of Hasbro's special d6s used in that game and Heroscape.
• Also while were at it, put Heroscape back into production.
• Partner up with smaller game companies to get their games in front of a wider audience. Get a few more RPG boxed sets onto the shelves at Target.

That's about it, I think. Nothing in there that would change their fundamental business models or shake up game design or anything like that - like I've said before, I think the official D&D rules going forward should change about as much over time as the rules for Monopoly or Risk have, and that future "editions" shouldn't change much from 5e.

 

[Lanefan]

@Son of the Serpent ; @Jer : - don't forget that WotC is about much more than just D&D. You're in charge of the whole thing, so what do you do with M:tG and the company's other assorted properties and games?