Layoffs at WotC

Abies writes "During last year or so, quite a lot of people were fired from WotC - current owners of the D&D line. A few days ago, _most_ of big names out there had to quit - including Skip Williams and Jeff Grubb. Official WotC press info, Enworld news about that and a Monte Cook thread contain some more detailed info. Do you think it will spell an end to D&D ? After something which seemed to be a ressurection of old-time RPG, Hasbro seems to kill the biggest RPG company out there. Will OGL and the D20 license be enough to preserve the genre ?"

Comments

It's all in your head

[Frodo Looijaard]

Remember folks - roleplaying is about together creating characters and a world. The roleplaying system you use can help you to get there, but it is not the important part. In fact, it is very possible to use a very simple system, or even no system at all. As long as your Game Master is fair, and you players play for the fun of it instead of trying to 'win' somehow, the sky is the limit!

Preserve the genre? Is my old copy of Chainmail. .

[kfg]

going to go up in a puff of smoke or something?

An RPG is nothing but a set of rules, a framework, around which a campaign is built. The rules have already been published. If people wish to play D&D they will continue to play D&D no matter what the hell happens at or to WotC.

Hey, remember the days when a single human being could carry all the rules to D&D without the aid of a forklift? In his *pocket?* Go get a copy of those rules somewhere, Xerox them if you have to, it'll just make them look more authentic anyway, and then find come creative type with a good *imagination* to run the show. All the players need are some pencils and graph paper.

Does the genre need to be preserved? Only if we've sunk so low in our society that college kids these days can't have fun sitting around the commons and * making cool shit up!*

KFG

WotC could lay off because the project is done.

[Golias]

Even if you really like d20 and D&D 3rd edition, this is not really bad news. All of the core rules for 3rd Ed D&D are now released, as well as most of the other books that TSR had planned. Plenty of ongoing expansions are coming out from 3rd party companies, so realistically, WotC doesn't actually need these writers for anything anymore, do they? (At least not until AD&D 4.0 comes out, which won't be for a long, long time.)

The only thing d20 still needs is a good set of software tools for GM's who like to run the game from their laptops, and due to the open nature of d20, I'm sure a lot of amitious hackers are going to fill that void anyway.

As long as WotC offered these guys a nice, fat severence package as a way of saying "thanks" for their efforts, I have no problem with seeing them cut loose.

How is Magic On-line doing?

[Aexia]

Is that failing as well? It seems to be me they went about it completely the wrong way.

Magic is a fun challenging game... if you can afford to spend at least $300-$600 a year on it or can bargain like a madman. People stop playing because they got tired of the upgrade treadmill and seeing their old cards more or less become useless.

So, for the on-line version, what do they do? They make an even worse version of that flaw! You have to pay full retail for virtual cards. I never paid that much even with the real ones. I would buy by the box at a substantial discount. That's how I stayed in it for so long. This just ensures people burn out sooner.

I think if they had merely charged $10/month for access to all the cards, they would've done insanely well. Over a year, it probably adds up to about the same as the booster approach for many people, but that whole year I would've been able to build any deck I wanted.

As it is, I'm staying the fuck away from it. It's a pity. I really liked the first computer version of Magic the Gathering.