You've just taken over WotC, what do you do?

[MichaelSomething]

As an impulse buy or a scheme to game the stock market, buying Twitter is one of the worst ways to go about it. If the goal was to gain prestige, there are cheaper, more effective ways out there. Personally, I go for a Moon base.

that defeats the point of buying Twitter (at least in Musk’s case)

 

[Eyes of Nine]

As an impulse buy or a scheme to game the stock market, buying Twitter is one of the worst ways to go about it. If the goal was to gain prestige, there are cheaper, more effective ways out there. Personally, I go for a Moon base.

My understanding is that is exactly what Space X's ultimate goal is... Except Moon base as stepping stone to Mars... And beyond!!!

 

[DarkCrisis]

Trim everything to be less complicated. Bring back weapon speed.

Maybe change the magic system a mana system.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Take it private.

Top down: root out and end any and all rent seeking behaviors, and give a good recommendation and the required severance package to everyone whose job only exists bc the company was publicly traded.

All top brass would probably be gone within a few years. The company is no longer an investment portfolio profit generator. Its purpose is to provide high quality goods and service to the gaming and fiction fandom communities, and I want the leadership that rebuilds the company with me to be diverse. And young, frankly.

That done:

Put together a magic team that is really in love with the game itself, not collectors.

I want very few things from the franchise specifically, and other than those I’d let the team run it. Just give me new Gate Watch fiction, and a CRPG. (Well, work with the digital gaming team on that)

For the D&D team:
Put Artificer in the PHB and the SRD, put playable Gnolls in something, and sidekick classes in the DMG and SRD, bc I can.

Ask the team to look into reworking base classes to a model of “get your stuff by level 12, and upgrade or reduce restrictions from there on”, without making the classes incompatible with existing subclasses.

Rebuild the fiction side of D&D, put all published settings on DMsGuild, and allow fiction on DMsGuild. Work toward bringing DMsGuild in house and integrating with DDB. If someone wants to put thier alternate sorcerer class for sale on our platform, and puts in the work to code it up, I see no reason it shouldn’t allow the purchaser to then use our CB to make a character with it.

Put together a diverse lore and settings team that works closely with the game design team, and give them the task of collating all the lore of 4e, and making it coherent, and then filling in the blanks. The resulting setting will be put into the Creative Commons, alongside being released as a print product at a cheap price point along with the basic rules, and some other odds and ends, probably in paperback format like 4e Essentials.

Other than that I’d take very little direct hand in the actual design of dnd, as much as I’d want to. Instead I’d have a few directives, and manage the teams.

Basically, the digital team would build DDB into a combination of what demiplane is doing and DMsGuild and HeroForge, all connected by a VTT that is as mod friendly as we can make it. Preferably at least Skyrim level mod-friendly, but Dragon Age Origins level or better if possible. From there, just gotta trust the community to do its thing.

The D&D CC ecosystem would expand to put the very basics of every medium into the open public space, that is stuff like basic VTT assets, whatever random music they’ve licensed over the years like the Spell Jams album, basically expand the OGL ecosystem to everywhere D&D lives, and rebuild the D&D product line as the backbone of a folk tradition. Oh and SRDs of every edition.

How would we make money?

By continuing to make good products for D&D, by expanding into CRPGs seriously, by seeking out and developing diverse creative talent and letting them make great stuff for us, and by providing a platform that is versatile and feature rich on the end user side and the publisher side, with an easy to use marketplace for content, vtt mods, etc, where a new small publisher can get help finding editors and artists and whatever else they need, by making our resources community resources.

Not all of which even has to be monetized. A healthy mod community is why Skyrim still sells and was able to put out so many special editions over the years. The mantra would be, “A thriving third party community sells core books.”


Eventually I’d spin off teams to work on new games, one of which would be my own game, and work with those teams to eventually let them buy their way out from under the wings of wotc, if that seems like a healthy move for what they’re making.

Grow the industry.

If the whole endeavor fails?

Every single bit of data that makes up the D&D IP goes into a share-alike CC, unless an item’s creator wants to buy it for what they can afford, like if Baker wanted to own Eberron.

Well, assuming we didn’t get the settings into the hands of thier creators before then.

Non-D&D properties would be up to the teams that made them.

 

[Digdude]

Id finally reprint and remake a Birthright 2.0 with full support and a online play map feature. Same with Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and every other original system and then I would release a new world every year, if it goes hot then support it, if not, move on to the next thing. Id also get political agendas out of my company and run it politically neutral, but morally positive.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Hostile takeover of Hasbro, forcing a split, and now you're in charge of D&D. What do you do with it, the OGL, and everything.

Prepare and release full, functional SRDs for every edition, especially 4e, under the CC-BY license.

Review and (most likely) overhaul the entire playtesting process, getting actual specialist consultants for the survey-design and statistical analysis.

Continue the "One D&D" project, but ditch the stupid name, improve the implementation of 4e-like stuff translated into 5e contexts, ADD NOVICE LEVELS, and otherwise find a balance between preserving the stuff that makes 5e popular and regaining the stuff that made 4e a well-designed game. Oh, and for the love of God and all that is holy, FIX CR.

Contact every amenable third-party publisher of meaningful size (much respect to one-man outfits, but contacting everyone is just not feasible.) Find out what they would want from a VTT service that would enable people to make use of their content. Prioritize support for 3PP before literally any other concern once the core program works.

Once that's done, develop that VTT, preferably with both 2D and 3D graphics, audio, all the bells and whistles. Build it so that official implementations of every existing edition of D&D can be made (even if they aren't available at launch.) All 3PP people who want to have their stuff integrated can do so; users can either acquire unlock codes from 3PP vendors, or said vendors can set up subscription service as a modular feature. All CC content will be available for free, but only with a very basic VTT. If you want the light/line-of-sight stuff, the 3D, the sound effects and animations, etc., that's what a subscription is for--the free VTT would be very basic, but thoroughly tested and (intended to be) guaranteed to work.

 

[Maxperson]

Hostile takeover of Hasbro, forcing a split, and now you're in charge of D&D. What do you do with it, the OGL, and everything.

Maybe it's a holdover from my marketing classes in college, but I still place a lot of emphasis on branding. It's really important. So that's what I'd focus on. A lot of licensing for use of that branding, which in turn improves the value of the branding.

One thing I would do is get together with the Spirit Store(and other big Halloween pop-ups) to sell D&D themed merchandise and costumes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Id also get political agendas out of my company and run it politically neutral, but morally positive.

As someone currently re-reading the original Conan stories, let me say what I've said many times before: every story (including adventures and RPG books, which exist as frameworks to create stories) is inherently political.

If you don't see them as political, it's because they match your current worldview. But your worldview is political, as reading authors from other eras, like Robert E. Howard, makes clear. His politics matched those of many other male White Texans of his era, but certainly didn't match, say, what a Black woman living in France would have likely believed. And they definitely are no longer in step with contemporary politics.

So "keeping politics out" means "support the contemporary status quo." And stated like that, it's hard to say that's not political, whether you like the current status quo or not.

It's not a question of keeping politics out, because you can't, but which politics you want in.

 

[Digdude]

As someone currently re-reading the original Conan stories, let me say what I've said many times before: every story (including adventures and RPG books, which exist as frameworks to create stories) are inherently political.

If you don't see them as political, it's because they match your current worldview. But your worldview is political, as reading authors from other eras, like Robert E. Howard, makes clear. His politics matched those of many other male White Texans of his era, but certainly didn't match, say, what a Black woman living in France would have likely believed. And they definitely are no longer in step with contemporary politics.

So "keeping politics out" means "support the contemporary status quo." And stated like that, it's hard to say that's not political, whether you like the current status quo or not.

It's not a question of keeping politics out, because you can't, but which politics you want in.

I can see that. I just sometimes feel there is this imaginary tug of war going on within the general RPG community.

 

[darjr]

I’d become the leader in the new world of open source D&D.

I’d offer access to internal developers to C7 and KBP and other clone makers. Not to design for them but to answer questions or give insight.

I’d make One D&D THE open source version of D&D.

I’d double down on making books full of WotC owned IP that isn’t CC.

Move forward on the digital side as Kyle presented it and lean on proven software already out there, that DnDBeyond 2d table top would get released asap. And still work in the 3D one focused in getting it in steam and on phones and consoles. Still with the third party stuff as below.

I’d invite third parties into DnDBeyond. Even with outside markets for it like in the DMsGuild or itch.

I would restart D&D encounters world wide with emphasis on in store play and support to teach DMs. But also supporting conventions and other locales.