Gamer Geek thread: D & D and the new OGL dustup

I played the first generation of D&D, back in the 1980s — the same era as the kids in “Stranger Things.”

If I remember correctly, Gary Gygax (sp?) and his minions were headquartered in Lake Geneva, Wis.

 

Yeah. TSR Games in Lake Geneva. I actually know one of the game designers who worked on early D&D and who designed their Boot Hill (Gunfighter vs Sheriff) game, Alan Hammack. He lives here and his wife used to own a book and game store.

 

Cancelled D&D Beyond Subscriptions Forced Hasbro's Hand

 

Boy have I got a Chick tract for you.

 

I've been following this closely. I disagree with one of the tweets you sent earlier about Cocks

I looked for something on this on the running nerd thread, but when it looked like that thread kinda died, I figured no one was as interested as I've been lol. I've been following it pretty closely on Twitter and some on Reddit. It' been wild. I've got two groups I'm in that run 5E, and I can't see us jumping to Pathfinder or anything else any time soon, but I also don't see myself buying any WotC products until they've made some changes that shows they're more than just nice PR words. Getting the new OGL out this week would be a big step in the right direction. Canning a few Wizards execs and replacing them with people that actually know something about the community would be huge too. I think Cocks knows it to a degree, but I also think he put himself in a position where he had to trust the people he hired. Plus, I have no doubt he wants to squeeze everything he can out of players, and when the two new execs hired last year keep saying, "People complained when we made changes like this with Xbox and mobile games, but eventually they shut up," he bought into what they were selling.

Apparently there were/are plans to go to a different tiered D&D Beyond subscription setup, with the top tier costing $30 a month and coming with some kinda extra content drops. For $30 a month, it would have to be some insane content.

 

Posting this for the reply, it will dupe yours, sorry.

 

Our group is playing 5e on Fantasy Grounds, so none of this nonsense will affect us directly with the exception of whatever damage is done to the 3PP. I just have a visceral distaste for being seen as sheep to be shorn, a walking pocket to be drained. That changes if WotC goes active and tries to drive the competing VTT's out in favor of D&D Beyond.

 

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/01/17/big-change-coming-for-hasbro-should-investor-worry/

 

Read this this morning. It's insane how much of Hasbro's profit comes from Wizards. I have a feeling they want to turn D&D into as close to a video game as they can, with all the microtransactions and subscriptions they can get out of it. My two games are both in-person right now, so it won't hurt me too much. If anything, it'll make me explore other systems more when one of my current campaigns wraps up.

 

Isn’t Magic also a Wizards game? How much does that bring in?

 

Richard Garfield/WotC invented Magic: the Gathering. It was a revolutionary game and it made a killing, which is where the money came from for WotC to buy the D&D IP in the first place. It was in bankruptcy due to the poor management of TSR. Hell, "Wizards of the Coast" is a reference to Garfield's D&D campaign back in the day. Hasbro then came along and swallowed WotC up for $325m or so.

Magic brings in about 80% of WotC's gross income, D&D about 20, maybe a bit more. OTOH, D&D brings in a much more substantial percentage of their actual profit, as much of it is electronic product now. You don't have to print, ship, or store inventory as a pdf. and the company owns it's own VTT which it is working to greatly improve as a game, better graphics, etc. OTOH, WotC's track record with electronics is pretty spotty, so I don't have huge confidence in that as a big moneymaker in the near term. Will provide good cash flow eventually probably.

Per the Motley Fool article linked above:

"It's hard to overestimate how important Wizards of the Coast is to Hasbro. According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, it accounts for just 22% of Hasbro's annual revenue -- but produces a staggering 72% of Hasbro's profit."

Many/most of Hasbro's products are classic games that are slow and steady sellers with a limited profit potential. You can sell a certain number of Monopoly games forever, but they will not spike due to a new release and if you jack the price up too far people will simply buy something else. The root of the problem here is that Hasbro seems determined to milk their cash cows dry for short term profits, at the cost of alienating their customer base. There are tons of other tabletop RPG systems to choose from, and if you piss people off badly enough they'll make that move.

Add that their handling of this has been pretty poor. OTOH, they got stone busted and unexpectedly had their pants torn off and have been playing catch up ever since.

Their longer term strategy was to 1. introduce a new edition, which always drives sales because everyone needs the new DM's Guide and Player's Handbooks, 2. Write a new predatory OGL that either taxes third party content producers or drives them out of D&D, and 3. To make a concerted push over time to drive as many players as possible to D&D Beyond, the virtual tabletop they acquired that allows play over the internet. Tabletop play means that only the DM's purchase the vast majority of the books and modules they release, while D&D Beyond would let them extract money from the entire player base in multiple ways.

Another thorny problem for WotC is that many of their recent releases for D&D are of uneven to poor quality. The writing is halfassed, and many cases the new stuff they put out appears to have been minimally playtested (if at all). Often the third party providers release product that cleans up those messes - they provide rules clarifications or improved versions of official releases. I've seen a number of people on Reddit and elsewhere vowing to never again advance buy any product from Wizards because they have spent from $30-50 on stuff that was of little use. "They're not getting a dime of my money until it's out and I've either seen it or have read good reviews. I'm tired of buying expansions that are supposed to contain core product which are a waste of money." Pushing out the 3PP will only increase the pressure on them to release better products, and frankly, it's been a while since I've seen anything that makes me think this is a priority for them.

 

Good riddance to the Open Gaming License