Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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With all the random threads and anger I keep seeing about Drops, Seasons, Online only "books", and Changes to Subs I wanted to invite that discord to a place.
Why are people upset about drops? What makes them "bad?" How would you have added something to Subscriptions of the same sense that would have incentivized MORE subs. Note "Making Master Tier Subs make drops shareable" will not change the current level of subscribers - so that is not the "idea"
Online only books - they are cheaper and have less materials than paper? Why is this a bad thing on this website?
How is the company that is supposed to continue to make products supposed to if people will not pay for the things they make? How can we continue to have and update this website if people do not want to pay to use it? What should WoTC and Hasbro think of doing to increase profits (which means better things on this website in all honesty) without adding a revenue stream from the people on this website?
It is important to note that a lot of what one sees on the forums is just noise, and you will usually see the same rabble rousers over and over again. Often, you can look at their posting history and see the majority of their posting is just coming out of the woodworks to complain. On a distressing number of users spurring these fits of contrived controversy, their posting history betrays the real source of anger is not the complaint of the week, but their dog whistling over the first iteration of D&D to actively take on the game’s unfortunately dark history.
But the important thing to remember? These folks might be loud, but they’re never really that big of a population. The OGL issue - something folks falsely claimed would destroy D&D - had a poll… that got less then 25% of the responses as a single one of the 2024 playtest polls.
That does not mean these small groups are not dangerous - particularly those instigating because of their other agendas. They can divide the community. And they can jeopardize the positive relationship we currently have with the new D&D team, if that team starts to realize interacting with the community gets them hit with that vocal minority of trolls.
All of which brings me to my real answer to your question: What should Wizards do? Wizards should continue to make the game better and continue to offer products that have sufficient value to justify purchases. They should listen to legitimate feedback that seeks to show them where value adds might be found (like they are listening on sharing player facing drops content).
And they should know that, even if their community gives a perception of being a very bitter, angry, and sometimes bigoted place, the majority of us just want to have fun and get cool products we find are worth purchasing.
WotC cannot do anything to make money without getting a bunch of folks mad. Back in the day folks complained about micro transactions and they got rid of buying single items from books so folks complained they got rid of it. Now thats back and folks are complaining about it, they implement the drops for folks that subscribe to make a subscription has more value folks complained about not being able to share said drops with non subscribers you cannot as a company do anything without making someone mad for some reason or another myself I love the drops and all the stuff we get. I have never made a purchase here for a subclass or a spell or a monster I just buy the whole book. I have a master tier subscription to share said purchased books I cannot share my unlocked drops and I'm very fine with that.
They should, at least, reduce market share to under 50%, as that constitutes a monopoly in the US & is blatantly illegal & immoral.
Barring that, I'd like to see more books more often, even if on the thinner side, w/smaller art & more lore for more things(that is always required to go through intense sensitivity consultation & continuity checks that don't break sensitivity)
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.
Can you in earnest and without reactionary language explain how D&D can reduce their market share? Monopolies implies that D&D is buying out or stopping competition that makes it so only D&D is bought? So how are they a monopoly in the actual sense of what as monopoly is? How would you lessen D&D's market share? By splitting them up? What parts would be sold off to other companies?
D&D Beyond is not the place to discuss the law. But, I will say this - as an attorney who has actually studied antitrust, I can say that this post is flagrantly wrong.
As we've seen recently, just about any time WotC announces changes they're met with rampant criticism. Oh and also earlier this year when they weren't announcing anything they were getting rampant criticism too. Some of the toxicity just festers here all the time and some of it gets drummed up by pot stirrers on YouTube and such. I've said a few times, the community is making it clear that they'll criticize WotC no matter what they do, and they won't let anything go even when WotC listens to the community and takes their suggestions in earnest to fix mistakes.
They literally give away their product. The srd is under Creative Commons. You can play D&D without giving WotC a single penny. That is the opposite of monopolistic behavior.
To answer the OP. There is a flaw in your premise, because anything they do will upset someone. It’s quite impossible to make everyone happy. That holds true not just for D&D but for really any human enterprise. And now we have countless ways for people to express their displeasure.
I think one of the reasons it seems to be oddly egregious in place like D&D, and also in other fandoms, is that people are very passionate about the game. We all come here because we love this game. We are nervous that the official caretakers will mess it up, because we don’t want to lose it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some out there who are just haters. But most of us really, really want what’s best for this hobby. We just disagree on what “best” is.
I think at least half of the rabid anti-wotc people are just racists who are mad some racism got removed in the 2024 rules. It makes them feel like people are judging them for their racism and they dont like being judged.
So they are using various non-racism criticisms as their proxy war against wotc. Including the spittle flinging rage about drops.
But i think if you kept the drops exactly the way they are, and if wotc made everything a paid subscripttiom just to access the basic rules, i think a lot of "wotc is the worst ever, waaaaa!" Types would be fine with drops and subscriptions if they would just put the racism back in the rules
How much is the threshold again? Last I checked, over 50% was the limit. /gen
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.
There is not a threshold and never has been - antitrust is one of the single most complex areas of law, since the analysis is based on a truly staggering number of different factors.
I doubt the efficacy of explaining the concept, but I can at least try so maybe you will understand how ridiculous your statement was. At its core, antitrust is not about market share - it is about fair competition. A company could have nearly a 100% market share and not run into antitrust issues, provided they earned that dominance without illegally shutting out competition.
Wizards falls into this category. They own the game that is synonymous with the industry, has the most recognition, and which has the best data analysis backing it in terms of reaching out to customers. That is the core of their dominance - not unfair competition.
Add onto that the reality that Wizards actively promotes their own competitors - something that is essentially fatal to any argument they are a monopoly. Wizards allows competitors to use Wizards’ content to create competing products. They actively promote other games - Wizards does a lot of work to ensure the success of conventions or game store events (they’re literally promoting a game day event on their homepage right now) that other, smaller companies use to promote products. Wizards staff has gone on interviews and promoted other games as something they like to play.
Wizards might be dominant, but simply being dominant does not a monopoly make.
Add another tombstone to a point lobbied against WotC.
Guess it isn't a Sherman case after all.
Thank you. /gen
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.
Xalthu, I think the anger and toxicity when it comes to the D&D community is unique at least in part because so many of us take some degree of ownership of D&D at our own tables. I think it's easy for some of us too lose sight of the reality of who owns D&D because we put so much time and effort into customizing and homebrewing and building our own groups and mini-communities. It's almost like the parasocial attachments people make with celebrities online, where this sort of distortion field takes hold and some of our community confuse the way we can do what we will with the mechanics and rules and content of the game with some kind of communal ownership of the brand. They lose sight of the fact that Dungeons & Dragons is a corporate commodity and exists within a capitalist system. Hasbro and WotC own D&D - it only "belongs" to the community in the sense that those of us who have the physical books can keep playing even if Hasbro and WotC and D&D Beyond stopped existing tomorrow.
SunIsGettingRealLow, I'm depressed just thinking about how attributing only half the toxicity to the angry racists feels optimistic.
Fully agree.
While I get bombastic about stupid decisions from mannagement, I genuinely think it's a great game, albeit flawed from a flawed corporate hierarchy.
If I hated everything, I wouldn't buy it, let alone look at it.
I want the company to do better, because better things are possible.
& we're in an era where that is more clear by the second.
I do think WotC needs to fight the grifter industry harder w/o using lawyers or automation. It would save a LOT of PR disasters by being abundantly transparent about something like Drops explicitly not leading to a change in sub model. Word things in a way that leads to ZERO wiggle room
Likewise, having a linguistics expert on-hand would solve a lot of problems in-game & in PR.
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.
There really isn't any such thing as zero wiggle room. Anywhere in life, let alone in what WotC offers to the D&D fan base, that's just now how life or communication works. As has been proven on these forums time and again, people will find a way to complain about anything WotC does. They could give away free houses and some people would loudly complain that the houses should have had three bathrooms instead of two. Suggesting having a linguistics expert on hand is insulting to the D&D team and would solve nothing. WotC has really stepped up their communication, and still people are complaining. Brian Perry commented positively and directly in the current Drops thread that they were soliciting and listening to feedback.