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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 ?"
If WoTC's plans are to get all these people to come back as freelancers, they're screwed. Microsoft caused a law in Washington to be enacted where dismissed employees cannot freelance for the same department for 1 year. Art department: gutted. RPG R&D: gutted.
I also read last night that WoTC's entire RPG operation may be for sale, with one interested party being Jordan Weisman. See this thread on the RPG.net message boards.
WotC announced its big contest for a new gaming world months ago. This isn't surprising. They fired the original game world owners to make room for new staff and a new setting that they can make pure profit on without coughing up cash to the original setting creators.
MUDs are great, but they are different from Pen & Paper roleplaying games. Of course there are some MUDs (or MOOs, or M**s) that do focus on role-playing, many of them only focus on roll-playing (still lot's of fun, but different).
Personally I've found that sometimes playing a classic Pen & Paper Roleplaying game on IRC is a great, especially if the genre fits (Shadowrun comes to my mind). It allows the GM (or DM or whatever you call it) levels of seperations of the players that are much harder to achieve on the table. For example you can always pass little notes with information only one player knows around, but the note-passing alone will give the other players hints. On IRC, you just open a private channel and write whatever you want, there's more ways for the GM to manipulate the players in the interest of the story. One funny trick is to open private channels to each player and tell each of them that they see something special, and tell each player the same, then look how long it takes them to share this knowledge with each other, this allone can give you great insights into your group.
It is easy to blaim Hasbro. But it is probably neither fair nor correct to do so.
/. or Kuro5hin. He wrote of how WotC and its founder changed. My understanding was that this was due to a sudden understanding of reality and markets demands. Hasbro was just one piece of the puzzle. The article also discussed the aquisition of TSR and how that was not a happy merger. IIRC this article was written by one of the first employees who stuck around for a year or two. Even after he left he still had an inside scoop as he was friends with many of the employees.
There was an article floating around written by a former WotC employee. It may have been posted to
Hasbro's record is not that bad. Look at some of the other titles they aquired. They picked up the excellent Shogun/Samurai Swords, and Axis&Allies. They also picked up Avalon Hill which was basically dead. Initially Hasbro did not understand these markets which are much older then the kids Hasbro knew. Hasbro made some initial mistakes. But look now. The Avalon Hill line is doing well. There are a number of quality games produced under Avalon Hill. (You can buy Diplomacy again!)
Likewise with TSR and D&D. TSR was dead. It was running at a loss with zero plan for recovery. TSR owed people money and was selling it books at a loss. WotC stepped in and instantly regreted it. Hasbro came onboard. We now have the best D&D rules ever. It is quite possible that without Hasbro D&D 3rd would not have seen the light of day. It is fact that someone had to step in and rescue both WotC and the D&D line.
There is no evidence to support a claim that Hasbro has harmed D&D. D&D 3 was published and is an excellent product. Hasbro has also treated the Avalon Hill line well. As other posters have written Hasbro probably saved WotC and D&D.