If they release naked cash grab after naked cash grab after naked cash grab to the point that everyone gets sick of it and abandons the game? I imagine that would be a very good day from the perspective of other TTRPGs. There'd be a ton of players who want to play TTRPGs, and their main source has just been lost. The other companies would love it (did you notice that some of the most commonly cited critics of the OGL thing on the forums just happened to release their own games fairly quickly afterwards? Yeah, that's when I became a cynic of the YouTube influencers taking shots at WotC).
If it's something that renders TTRPGs obsolete, then of course they'll get smashed too. In that case though, I wouldn't expect D&D to strictly speaking die though. Instead, it'll morph into something new, riding the change to new markets. You're getting into philosophy then though, whether that new thing really could be considered D&D.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If they release naked cash grab after naked cash grab after naked cash grab to the point that everyone gets sick of it and abandons the game? I imagine that would be a very good day from the perspective of other TTRPGs.
I don't (at least, if you just imagine D&D failing; having some other game take over its market is a different issue). Yes, some players would jump to other TTRPGs, but a lot of them would just quit. Or just play with their existing books and not buy anything new. On the short term that would probably be a net gain for other games, but it would dramatically crunch the number of new players entering the hobby, which in the long run would be bad for everyone.
If they release naked cash grab after naked cash grab after naked cash grab to the point that everyone gets sick of it and abandons the game? I imagine that would be a very good day from the perspective of other TTRPGs. There'd be a ton of players who want to play TTRPGs, and their main source has just been lost. The other companies would love it (did you notice that some of the most commonly cited critics of the OGL thing on the forums just happened to release their own games fairly quickly afterwards? Yeah, that's when I became a cynic of the YouTube influencers taking shots at WotC).
If it's something that renders TTRPGs obsolete, then of course they'll get smashed too. In that case though, I wouldn't expect D&D to strictly speaking die though. Instead, it'll morph into something new, riding the change to new markets. You're getting into philosophy then though, whether that new thing really could be considered D&D.
This would hurt more WOTC then D&D, like what happen in TSR time. Back then, when this started to affect D&D the whole market started to sink along with it.
A conspirancy should be a group with a secret plan, and the closest one to this would be a big company what wanted to acquire Hasbro.
Today we are in the second golden age of D&D. It is more popular than ever, but Hasbro really doesn't want to sell more D&D books, but D&D videogames, and this is a different industry.
Frankly, this is another one of those specious theories that keeps getting tossed around. Despite how many people enjoy invoking the stereotype of the executive who’s completely divorced from reality, the fact of the matter is no one can successfully run a company while being so stupid they can’t recognize what the bread and butter of their sales are. Yes, they’re exploring secondary markets to sell more things to more of the player base, but that’s as a supplement to book sales, not a replacement.
I'm still trying to understand this argument that they're abandoning physical books.
They've already announced 7 new books for 5e24, 6 of which are scheduled to be released later this year. This isn't a strategy for someone who's abandoning physical books.
The question is, if this massive thing happens would take down only D&D?
Yes.
Like, there is absolutely the chance that Hasbro decides to do something extremely dumb that alienates the core D&D Audience or they just go bankrupt.
Tabletop will still exist.
Same token if the WWE were to fail today, AEW exists.
Both examples for me are basically so big that they've become somewhat self sustaining but that doesn't mean they can't self sabotage.
If they got full on Chapter 7 bankrupt, someone will snap up D&D. As for alienating the audience, it’s hypothetically possible, but given it’s already weathered one “crisis” that made a fair portion of the community sit up and take notice, as well as a number of smaller speed bumps. Again, despite all the memes and caricatures out there, the kind of stupid that would push through something that would outright kill the brand doesn’t become a shot caller for an industry leading corporation. Is it objectively impossible for them to completely fail to read the room for a long enough period to kill the golden goose? No, but I rank it about even with a meteor strike leveling their headquarters.
Again, this would hurt WTOC, not D&D exactly, is like what happen in the end o TSR. If WOTC fail with D&D the brand would resist like it already did. The point is if D&D itself (the game, the brand, etc...) were take down.
We see something like this before 3e realese, all the TTRPG market were down
Again, despite all the memes and caricatures out there, the kind of stupid that would push through something that would outright kill the brand doesn’t become a shot caller for an industry leading corporation. Is it objectively impossible for them to completely fail to read the room for a long enough period to kill the golden goose? No, but I rank it about even with a meteor strike leveling their headquarters.
Shutting down and censoring discourse through selective punishment and favoritism is exactly how something "objectively impossible" becomes how could they have let this happen. It creates a false sense of this is what everyone wants, when the reality is there are people not happy with a direction, and they get tired of being told their stupid and wrong and getting punished for speaking up so most leave, further reinforcing unpopular decisions leading to failure to read the room.
This is a proven outcome to this methodology, the best way to prevent the "objectively impossible" from becoming a sad reality is open discourse, not shutting it down.
That… rather misses the entire point of my comment. I was specifically saying it’s not objectively impossible, just that it would take the kind of willful stupidity that doesn’t land you in an executive seat anywhere this side of Dilbert. I’m not talking about reading the room in the context of this discussion or forum. I’m talking real market research and product performance. Yes, hypothetically someone can choose to shut out all feedback and historical performance and go with whatever course they feel like, but realistically judgement that poor doesn’t put you at the head of something like Hasbro. And, additionally, as Hasbro is publicly traded, if you blatantly do that all the other executives and shareholders will have you out the door and in court before you can say “gross breach of fiduciary duty”. There’s going to be ups and downs and WotC/Hasbro could make enough bad decisions to fold financially, but it would take sitcom levels of malice/stupidity for someone to irrevocably taint D&D at some core conceptual level.
I'm sorry but DnD 4e did not outsell Pathfinder by a million to one. There is exaggerating, and then there is whatever that claim is.
Even if you assume Pathfinder 1e only sold 10k copies (it sold far far more than this), you're then claiming that DnD 4e sold 10 billion copies. At the time that would have been about 1.5 copies of the core rules per person on the planet.
If Pathfinder 1e sold 100k copies of its core rules, then you're claiming dnd sold 100 billion copies, meaning every person on Earth would have been buying 10+ copies of the dnd core rules.
I'm still trying to understand this argument that they're abandoning physical books.
They've already announced 7 new books for 5e24, 6 of which are scheduled to be released later this year. This isn't a strategy for someone who's abandoning physical books.
The "They are abandoning physical books" is an extrapolation of certain moves they made in the past few years when a lot of the moves they were making gave the impression of going full digital. Stuff like closing longstanding relationships with printers they have used for decades, canceling translation efforts and distribution plans for latin America, and things Cynthia Williams was saying about recurring monetization models being the way forward.
Also the annoucement of books does not mean they are staying physical. The digital copies are still referred to as "books" and with certain things like Tariffs and tradewars that are occurring currently, it was a reasonable assumption that a company that keeps slashing its workforce for short term gains might cheap out and go purely digital to save a few bucks. It isn't an out there and unreasoble thing to think given the things that happened around the time of the OGL rewrite Debacle. It is also reasonable to assume that the push back to those possibilities made them rethink.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
No one knows post-2020 what decisions were fully independent actions by WotC, & what was mandated by Hasbro, & we also don't know how much of that is due to smoke & mirrors vs failure to communicate. Likewise, no one knows what goes on in private between companies, if anything.
Heck, there's barely anyone left at WotC that was involved in the revenue split over Dragon Magazine & Dungeon Magazine, so I don't know who at Paizo still is taking things personally(Why are they not railing at Darrington Press or Chaosium, for example?). If anything, they're railing against the mere continued existence of WotC. & that's going from a personal grudge to something akin to team rivalries or Kellogg's vs whomever owns Post.
I have my tinfoil hat thoughts on the subject matter of conspiracies in the TableTop scene, but I'll keep it private unless DM'd.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
OP has also come back since then, admitting to and clarifying the fact that this was blatant HYPERBOLE.
Also note that the statement was outperforming the completion (sic) not Pathfinder 1e on its own.
Arguing this kind of minutiae after it has been specifically addressed only suggests that people are here simply to argue for the sake of argument rather than to attend, comprehend, internalize or deal in a constructive way with what others are saying.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
OP has also come back since then, admitting to and clarifying the fact that this was blatant HYPERBOLE.
Also note that the statement was outperforming the completion (sic) not Pathfinder 1e on its own.
Arguing this kind of minutiae after it has been specifically addressed only suggests that people are here simply to argue for the sake of argument rather than to attend, comprehend, internalize or deal in a constructive way with what others are saying.
I just answered the question, dude. Please direct your rant at the people actually arguing about it, which I'm not.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
OP has also come back since then, admitting to and clarifying the fact that this was blatant HYPERBOLE.
Also note that the statement was outperforming the completion (sic) not Pathfinder 1e on its own.
Arguing this kind of minutiae after it has been specifically addressed only suggests that people are here simply to argue for the sake of argument rather than to attend, comprehend, internalize or deal in a constructive way with what others are saying.
I just answered the question, dude. Please direct your rant at the people actually arguing about it, which I'm not.
You didn’t “just answer the question” because OP didn’t claim what you reported they did. They’ve also come back since then with further commentary regarding that first statement, which you didn’t address.
Any value that answering the question might bring to the discussion—I don’t believe there is any FWIW—was squandered by your inaccurate representation of OP’s position.
1: No one can kill D&D besides the owners of the IP, D&D is not now or ever has been "dying" even at it's lowest sales 4th edition, it out sold the completion by almost 1 million to 1.
OP has also come back since then, admitting to and clarifying the fact that this was blatant HYPERBOLE.
Also note that the statement was outperforming the completion (sic) not Pathfinder 1e on its own.
Arguing this kind of minutiae after it has been specifically addressed only suggests that people are here simply to argue for the sake of argument rather than to attend, comprehend, internalize or deal in a constructive way with what others are saying.
I just answered the question, dude. Please direct your rant at the people actually arguing about it, which I'm not.
You didn’t “just answer the question” because OP didn’t claim what you reported they did. They’ve also come back since then with further commentary regarding that first statement, which you didn’t address.
Any value that answering the question might bring to the discussion—I don’t believe there is any FWIW—was squandered by your inaccurate representation of OP’s position.
Yes, I did "just answer the question".
Comrade_Jenkins: "I'm sorry but DnD 4e did not outsell Pathfinder by a million to one. There is exaggerating, and then there is whatever that claim is."
SaintLothar: "Who claim that?"
This ^ is what I answered. I provided the context for what Comrade_Jenkins was talking about. That's all I did.
Maybe direct your ire at Comrade_Jenkins who actually perpetuated the argument despite gothicshark's admission of hyperbole? Why are you ignoring them, and going after me who only provided context when asked? Dafuq did I do to you to deserve special treatment?
For the record, I'm aware it's hyperbole. I agreed with gothicshark. This is why I upvoted his original post.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Again, despite all the memes and caricatures out there, the kind of stupid that would push through something that would outright kill the brand doesn’t become a shot caller for an industry leading corporation. Is it objectively impossible for them to completely fail to read the room for a long enough period to kill the golden goose? No, but I rank it about even with a meteor strike leveling their headquarters.
Shutting down and censoring discourse through selective punishment and favoritism is exactly how something "objectively impossible" becomes how could they have let this happen. It creates a false sense of this is what everyone wants, when the reality is there are people not happy with a direction, and they get tired of being told their stupid and wrong and getting punished for speaking up so most leave, further reinforcing unpopular decisions leading to failure to read the room.
This is a proven outcome to this methodology, the best way to prevent the "objectively impossible" from becoming a sad reality is open discourse, not shutting it down.
Please elaborate on who specifically is being "shut down & censored through selective punishment & favoritism". & provide ironclad proof of such happening.
I THINK I know what you're saying, but I'd like conformation one way or the other.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Depends on what the "thing" is.
If they release naked cash grab after naked cash grab after naked cash grab to the point that everyone gets sick of it and abandons the game? I imagine that would be a very good day from the perspective of other TTRPGs. There'd be a ton of players who want to play TTRPGs, and their main source has just been lost. The other companies would love it (did you notice that some of the most commonly cited critics of the OGL thing on the forums just happened to release their own games fairly quickly afterwards? Yeah, that's when I became a cynic of the YouTube influencers taking shots at WotC).
If it's something that renders TTRPGs obsolete, then of course they'll get smashed too. In that case though, I wouldn't expect D&D to strictly speaking die though. Instead, it'll morph into something new, riding the change to new markets. You're getting into philosophy then though, whether that new thing really could be considered D&D.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I don't (at least, if you just imagine D&D failing; having some other game take over its market is a different issue). Yes, some players would jump to other TTRPGs, but a lot of them would just quit. Or just play with their existing books and not buy anything new. On the short term that would probably be a net gain for other games, but it would dramatically crunch the number of new players entering the hobby, which in the long run would be bad for everyone.
This would hurt more WOTC then D&D, like what happen in TSR time. Back then, when this started to affect D&D the whole market started to sink along with it.
Oh yes, they clearly have been expressing no interest in making new book content. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/ua/
Frankly, this is another one of those specious theories that keeps getting tossed around. Despite how many people enjoy invoking the stereotype of the executive who’s completely divorced from reality, the fact of the matter is no one can successfully run a company while being so stupid they can’t recognize what the bread and butter of their sales are. Yes, they’re exploring secondary markets to sell more things to more of the player base, but that’s as a supplement to book sales, not a replacement.
I'm still trying to understand this argument that they're abandoning physical books.
They've already announced 7 new books for 5e24, 6 of which are scheduled to be released later this year. This isn't a strategy for someone who's abandoning physical books.
Yes.
Like, there is absolutely the chance that Hasbro decides to do something extremely dumb that alienates the core D&D Audience or they just go bankrupt.
Tabletop will still exist.
Same token if the WWE were to fail today, AEW exists.
Both examples for me are basically so big that they've become somewhat self sustaining but that doesn't mean they can't self sabotage.
If they got full on Chapter 7 bankrupt, someone will snap up D&D. As for alienating the audience, it’s hypothetically possible, but given it’s already weathered one “crisis” that made a fair portion of the community sit up and take notice, as well as a number of smaller speed bumps. Again, despite all the memes and caricatures out there, the kind of stupid that would push through something that would outright kill the brand doesn’t become a shot caller for an industry leading corporation. Is it objectively impossible for them to completely fail to read the room for a long enough period to kill the golden goose? No, but I rank it about even with a meteor strike leveling their headquarters.
Again, this would hurt WTOC, not D&D exactly, is like what happen in the end o TSR. If WOTC fail with D&D the brand would resist like it already did. The point is if D&D itself (the game, the brand, etc...) were take down.
We see something like this before 3e realese, all the TTRPG market were down
Shutting down and censoring discourse through selective punishment and favoritism is exactly how something "objectively impossible" becomes how could they have let this happen. It creates a false sense of this is what everyone wants, when the reality is there are people not happy with a direction, and they get tired of being told their stupid and wrong and getting punished for speaking up so most leave, further reinforcing unpopular decisions leading to failure to read the room.
This is a proven outcome to this methodology, the best way to prevent the "objectively impossible" from becoming a sad reality is open discourse, not shutting it down.
That… rather misses the entire point of my comment. I was specifically saying it’s not objectively impossible, just that it would take the kind of willful stupidity that doesn’t land you in an executive seat anywhere this side of Dilbert. I’m not talking about reading the room in the context of this discussion or forum. I’m talking real market research and product performance. Yes, hypothetically someone can choose to shut out all feedback and historical performance and go with whatever course they feel like, but realistically judgement that poor doesn’t put you at the head of something like Hasbro. And, additionally, as Hasbro is publicly traded, if you blatantly do that all the other executives and shareholders will have you out the door and in court before you can say “gross breach of fiduciary duty”. There’s going to be ups and downs and WotC/Hasbro could make enough bad decisions to fold financially, but it would take sitcom levels of malice/stupidity for someone to irrevocably taint D&D at some core conceptual level.
I'm sorry but DnD 4e did not outsell Pathfinder by a million to one. There is exaggerating, and then there is whatever that claim is.
Even if you assume Pathfinder 1e only sold 10k copies (it sold far far more than this), you're then claiming that DnD 4e sold 10 billion copies. At the time that would have been about 1.5 copies of the core rules per person on the planet.
If Pathfinder 1e sold 100k copies of its core rules, then you're claiming dnd sold 100 billion copies, meaning every person on Earth would have been buying 10+ copies of the dnd core rules.
Who claim that?
The "They are abandoning physical books" is an extrapolation of certain moves they made in the past few years when a lot of the moves they were making gave the impression of going full digital. Stuff like closing longstanding relationships with printers they have used for decades, canceling translation efforts and distribution plans for latin America, and things Cynthia Williams was saying about recurring monetization models being the way forward.
Also the annoucement of books does not mean they are staying physical. The digital copies are still referred to as "books" and with certain things like Tariffs and tradewars that are occurring currently, it was a reasonable assumption that a company that keeps slashing its workforce for short term gains might cheap out and go purely digital to save a few bucks.
It isn't an out there and unreasoble thing to think given the things that happened around the time of the OGL rewrite Debacle.
It is also reasonable to assume that the push back to those possibilities made them rethink.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
No one knows post-2020 what decisions were fully independent actions by WotC, & what was mandated by Hasbro, & we also don't know how much of that is due to smoke & mirrors vs failure to communicate. Likewise, no one knows what goes on in private between companies, if anything.
Heck, there's barely anyone left at WotC that was involved in the revenue split over Dragon Magazine & Dungeon Magazine, so I don't know who at Paizo still is taking things personally(Why are they not railing at Darrington Press or Chaosium, for example?). If anything, they're railing against the mere continued existence of WotC. & that's going from a personal grudge to something akin to team rivalries or Kellogg's vs whomever owns Post.
I have my tinfoil hat thoughts on the subject matter of conspiracies in the TableTop scene, but I'll keep it private unless DM'd.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
The OP.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
OP has also come back since then, admitting to and clarifying the fact that this was blatant HYPERBOLE.
Also note that the statement was outperforming the completion (sic) not Pathfinder 1e on its own.
Arguing this kind of minutiae after it has been specifically addressed only suggests that people are here simply to argue for the sake of argument rather than to attend, comprehend, internalize or deal in a constructive way with what others are saying.
I just answered the question, dude. Please direct your rant at the people actually arguing about it, which I'm not.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
You didn’t “just answer the question” because OP didn’t claim what you reported they did. They’ve also come back since then with further commentary regarding that first statement, which you didn’t address.
Any value that answering the question might bring to the discussion—I don’t believe there is any FWIW—was squandered by your inaccurate representation of OP’s position.
Yes, I did "just answer the question".
Comrade_Jenkins: "I'm sorry but DnD 4e did not outsell Pathfinder by a million to one. There is exaggerating, and then there is whatever that claim is."
SaintLothar: "Who claim that?"
This ^ is what I answered. I provided the context for what Comrade_Jenkins was talking about. That's all I did.
Maybe direct your ire at Comrade_Jenkins who actually perpetuated the argument despite gothicshark's admission of hyperbole? Why are you ignoring them, and going after me who only provided context when asked? Dafuq did I do to you to deserve special treatment?
For the record, I'm aware it's hyperbole. I agreed with gothicshark. This is why I upvoted his original post.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Please elaborate on who specifically is being "shut down & censored through selective punishment & favoritism". & provide ironclad proof of such happening.
I THINK I know what you're saying, but I'd like conformation one way or the other.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.