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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 ?"
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!
RPG's as a genre won't go away, I promise you. There are always MUDs (Multi-user dimension/dungeons) which people can play. Play is free and you make as many characters as you want. Runs on telnet, so you can do it from any OS. My personal favorite is Imperial, at telnet://imperial.modeemi.cs.tut.fi:6969. They also have a web page at that address, minus the port. It is supported by the goodwill of the founders. There are thousands more - www.mudconnector.com. Cheers!
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
They didn't get kicked out of their parent's basements. They would be really screwed then.
The D&D genre will survive, at the very least because Hackmaster is still out there. Granted, it's extreme power gaming, but it's fun in small doses.
Finding God in a Dog
Jeff Grubb has left WotC to focus more on his writing. His story, "Apocalypse Noun," is being included in the upcoming Thieves' World: Turning Points collection of short stories, due out this November. He is also currently working on the final WARCRAFT novel, The Last Guardian.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Apparently the Epic (levels higher than 20) rules D&D are already designed so they have their next cash cow in the bag already. Licensing for D&D and continuing Magic sales will keep them profitable for quite some time, given they don't have any expensive employees anymore.
Its just business. Short-sited myopic business maybe, but not surprising at all. Hasbro is still in business while the much of the competition isnt. The employees can always invent a new game, become hugely popular, and sell out to Hasbro again.
I used to work at a WotC store... and let me tell you... we saw this from the inside out... Sure magic used to be fun but when it changed into having to buy 200 dollars worth of cards every 6 months or less it was less fun and more painful. and the ONLY way to keep up was to buy new cards.. WotC ensured that by removing older cards from the game. atleast with D&D you could buy the basic books and go from there. I have a feeling Hasbro is collectivly crapping them selves right now seeing their 'Wunderkind' failing... I think its that people don't want to spend 200 bucks when ever a new set comes out so they can have the latest uber card so they can win in a tournament.
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
"leveling up" appeals to a certain segment of the RPG community. Yet there are others who prefer emphasizing role-playing, and for whom gaining experience and levels isn't that important. Finally, there are also plenty of games whose main selling point is being "level-less"; character advancement is accomplished through other means, usually gaining distributable ability points according to actions during the game.
Yeah, that's why I stopped playing most card games and RPGs. I wasted so much money on Decipher's Star Wars CCGs trying to get rare cards even though the game was terrible (no where near as good as magic). I stopped buying RPG books when I realized I wasted hundreds of dollars on White Wolf's World of Darkness books just to stay up-to-date on the stories. It might be an effective business model to keep shoveling cards and books down gamers' throats, but it's not an effective consumer model.
Thankfully, there are alternatives. I recommend anything from Looney Labs. I've played Fluxx, Chrononauts, and Aquarius, and each was a fun, elegant, and affordable (no 20 different expansions to milk out more cash) game.
... or immediately lose your job. On the other hand, if the rumors I've heard in the industry about WotC's downhill slide are true, it's good that a bunch of talented designers are now free to look for positions elsewhere. These are all good folks, and I'm sure they'll land on their feet elsewhere.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
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.
I remember back when Wizards announced the D20 system. They had an "interview" or something like that on their site, describing it. And one of the points they made on their site was that D20 could be used to design a system that was completely level-free.
:D) sufficiently advanced in D&D that they know how to adapt D20 to be level-free? Or do you know someone else that already did that?
Is anyone here (well, duh, of course
Oh, you mean will D&D software survive. That has nothing to do WotC. They only control things that are called D&D. Example:
A long time ago a undergrad name Michael Toy used the D&D fighting system and monster stats to create a Curses game called Rogue, the predecessor to NetHack. (Ignore Glenn Wichmann -- he's a legend in his own mind.) TSR didn't care for this, of course, and sicced their lawyers on him. The only result was that all the names got changed to non-D&D things. Which was actually an improvement -- there's no place in the D&D universe for my own favorite player character, the Tourist
Bottom line -- you don't need the media monopolies to play games, any more than you need them to make music. Pity about Farscape though.
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.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
How specific *is* this patent, though? While a lot of the software patents out there are horrible--boo, hiss, yeah, let's move on--either WotC isn't enforcing theirs very well, or an awful lot of computer gaming companies must be paying them royalties. There are plenty of non-D&D computer games that use levelling... unless they're all paying to license the idea, I think that non-D&D tabletop games aren't in any danger of being prevented from using it.
Which isn't to say that levelling is the most important thing ever. Real people do not have levels.
No, your Chainmail rules will not dissapear. I will continue to play D&D with my friends. But if it will stop to be marketed this year, then in few years people will not understand what you are talking about when you will say AC.
;). To really develop you need a fresh look. And I doubt you can expect thousands of teenagers to look into archives for back issues of not-longer-developer games. These thousands are not important, but some of them will turn into really good GMs and players.
Of course, some people don't care. If they can play with their old time friends, it's ok. But from my experience (not much, I do NOT have original chainmail on my shelf - I play RPGs for only 15 years), fresh blood is very refreshing experience (not Vampire pun intended
Now, it is not so grim - there will be other RPGs out there. If somebody would be a good D&D DM, he will also probably make good DM in other games. But certain genre of RPG - high heroic, strict rules for even very powerful characters, etc, is for me tightly tied to D&D. Even if I sometimes prefer 'deeper' sessions, I and my friends really enjoy being able to developer a HERO from 1st level up to ultimate dragon-slaying king. And I'm afraid, that with D&D demise (which is not yet sure of course), this type of RPG would die.
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.
like White Wolf
Why am I suddenly reminded of the phrase "Hey, netpunks"?
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Almost everyone I see who has this opinion was never a very good magic player.
True Story: A friend of mine had a dream deck. He saved up so that he could spend almost $500 in order to get all of the rares for this deck, including some cards that weren't even legal anymore, such as some Arabian nights.
He came to my house, and I didn't have any decks built. In about 20 minutes, and using a grand total of one rare card worth about five bucks, I built a tournament legal deck that beat him ten games in a row, six with his new deck, and four with an older deck he'd built.
This friend had a deck published in the Duelist, so it's not like he didn't know what he was doing... but it proves that it's quite possible to be a dominating Magic player with less than $20.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
Well, if DnD needs recruiters to survive, it's in trouble with or without WoTC! When was the last time you saw a recuirter for Monopoly? How about checkers?
Newer? Hungrier?
How long do you think White Wolf has been publishing, eh? You been living under a rock? White Wolf is fat and happy draining all the tragically living of their money with Vampire and all hte rest of their crap from the World of Darkness, and bringing out new game after new game. No, they're not the biggest dog on the block, but they sure aren't a scrappy upstart, nor are they wondering where their next meal will come from.
I think the reason we're seeing these layoffs is that Hasbro wants a profit margin similar to the one they had when Pokemon and MTG were at their prime, when D&D3 was first released and selling like mad. But Pokemon's popularity is waning, and just about everyone who wants D&D3 has it by now...so they're not making as much money, and something has to go.
Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast ("Hazards of the Coast"?) already sold GenCon to Peter Adkinson, the ousted ex-President of WotC. Perhaps before long they'll sell the RPG stuff to him, too.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Not everything White Wolf puts out is World of Darkness. I'm blase' about the whole WoD thing, but I'm really fond of Adventure!, their AEonverse pulp roleplaying setting.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Didn't mean to imply that. The main point being, the WoD is their cash cow. Yeah, they do other stuff, but they can because Vampire and everything is spawned made them a whole lot of cash.
...Hasbro faked the accounting irregularities because WotC was meeting their financial projections? It's being suggested there was a contract which said Hasbro couldn't meddle inside the company unless they missed certain numbers.
Hasbro's quarterly reports seem to indicate that Wizards were hitting their numbers, keeping their parent afloat, but not turning in big enough profits (Pokemon or Magic levels) to pull Hasbro out of its disastrous tailspin.
Looks pretty suspicious: Layoffs at the profitable division.
Anyone know the scoop? Surely someone recently laid off can post anonymously.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
it is literally prehistoric.
You want prior art, centuries old?
*King me!*
KFG
I know this might sound harsh. but after roleplaying for nearly 15 years, D&D just doesn't offer anything interesting anymore. I used to play it when I was 10 and thought all that there was to RPGs was hack an' slash, but that was a long time ago.
There are some nice odds and ends that came out of TSR - I personally thought that Ravenloft, Darksun and Planescape were interesting attempts to breath new life into the increasingly stagnant fantasy genre, but look at how bland the rest of the backgrounds are: Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Birthright - footnotes to Tolkien at best., they are nothing more than cashcows. The D&D system just plain sucked, still does, and if you just want to do hack an' slash then there are plenty of multiplayer computer games such as Diablo II, Everquest, and even the biosphere offerings will more than fill your needs and are probably much more fun. Or why not just do wargaming instead - Games Workhop and other cater to this market just fine?
The reason that roleplaying keeps me interested theses days is the background, complex plots, characters and interesting players/GMs - the sort of interactivity that computers games will not yet achieve for some time to come. Look at the two biggest RPG companies aside from WotC: Whitewolf and Steve Jackson Games:
Love or hate it (which I do in equal amounts) WW has done much more to actually build interesting and innovative fictional environments for roleplaying with the World of Darkness and Trinty Universe lines than TSR/WotC has ever managed with various flavours of D&D. They sell not because the system, but because of the content and quality of the background material.
Likewise, GURPS is popular not because of the system, (although it is a much better attempt at a universal system than D&D3 will ever be) but because of the hugh range of excellently written background books -regardless of what system you like to use, even if you hate the system, many of the books are still highly entertaining, and useful.
The opensource game license is an interesting idea, but I believe ultimately flawed. They are working from the premise that getting into RPGs is hard because there are so many systems and they are so different to learn - their solution is that we all use the D&D system and so don't have to learn new systems for different genres of play and then everyone can then write their games for the largest possible market (D&D system). The problem with this is that one system doesn't suit all types of games, all types of genre and all types of groups!
If you are into interesting system mechanics then look at Phage Press' Amber Diceless Roleplaying games (set in Zelazn'y Chronicles of Amber Universe), or Jonathan Tweet's Everway RPG, based on using vision and fate card. Both are truely unique and interesting games because the systems facilitates storytelling. The first time that we played Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu was a milestone for our gaming group: WHAT WE CAN'T JUST KILL THE ENEMY? We had to actually think about innovative ways to defeat the enemy while avoiding combat!
Our group LIKES there to be different flavours of rules for different types of games we play - hell most of the games we play these days barely require any rules: the ROLEplaying of characters is what is important not the ROLLplaying of dice! Do the roleplaying community a big favour and let D&D die!
Corporate marketing people will always concede that the ultimate promotion is word-of-mouth. They do their best to create this, but they'll readily admit that it's mostly beyond their control.
Another parallel with DnD: in both games, players tend to improvise rules not approved by the publishers. In Monopoly, most players make the fine revenue into a prize you get by pulling a card at the right moment. (This change makes the game too random for my taste, but most people seem to like it.) And of course, serious Dungeon Masters use the TSR books as departure point, not a bible. In both cases, game is sustained by a critical mass of enthusiasts, not by corporate marketing.
Or what about their games under the Black Dog Game Factory label, the most infamous being H.O.L (Human Occupied Landfill, pronounced "hole")? H.O.L has some FANTASTIC creativity in it for anyone who's been slightly frustrated with the more-structured tabletop RPGs. Crying shame that it's been discontinued.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
One thing I miss from Rogue/Nethack's time-sharing days: it's pretty hard to share data files. Nothing more fun than finding the corpse of one of your friends and getting to plunder all his stuff!
WotC's marketing? Hah! When WotC bought out TSR D&D was already a thriving "product." TSR didn't "market" D&D, they made it available for purchase.
So who did the marketing? The DM's and players, that's who. No, I don't expect teenagers to look into archives for back issues of no longer developed games. I expect to go out and actively recruit them to play a game whose basic framework has already *been* developed and which we as players flesh out for our own enjoyment. The whole point of an RPG is that the *players* do their own development. An RPG is not a "product," it's an imaginative, interactive *game.*
If game playing were left to the "marketing" of some corporation chess and checkers not only would have been dead centuries ago, they never would have existed in the first place!
The rules to D&D really did fit in your pocket once upon a time. In fact they were simple enough that it would be a practical undertaking to memorize them. Publication is a non-issue, just as it is with Chess. Just as with chess the rules are known by one and passed by direct transmision to others.
What will kill the RPG genre? One and only one thing, which I have already alluded to. When college kids will only play games that are "marketed" to them with rules that are "under development" in order to get them to buy the same product over and over and over again. When they can't take a loose framework and develop their own game *themselves*, then the RPG genre will die.
When this happens we'll have far more to worry about than RPGing.
KFG
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.
What is the patent number so we can review this "patent" ?
Good Luck to all the folks who were laid off and are going to receive "career transistion services and support."
:-/
I was one of Wotc's laid off employees and they never provided any career transition services and support even though I received a letter from the company stating I would. Unfortunately, it was a big lie.
My two cents,
Rondi Patterson
Former Regional Representative
Wizards of the Coast
From this page. It's sad too see this stuff...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
WotC damaged intelligent gaming beyond repair. I feel no pitty what so ever for the company being bought by Hasbro after buying or chrushing nearly *every* RPG and Game Publisher in the buisness and then getting into shallow water.
Magic and the following Wave of Trading Card games - that what made WotC turn from a 3 Person company into a 300+ company - drained an entire generation from a then solid culture of Pen and Paper RPGs with a substancial diversity. I'm feel sorry that those times had to pass so quickly.
Damn WotC and their Magic, Pokemon and all that crap...
(just the 2 cents of an old school gamer)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Pff...anyone can build a fast weenie creature deck out of a bunch of commons that will kill a sophisticated slower deck. Magic sucks as a game...I'm surprised anyone plays it still.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Isn't that a Duran Duran song?
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Reports of the great mage Elminster applying at a Local Seattle McDonalds are coming in. Many witnesses say they saw him standing in line for a job application practicing his lines, 'Would you like fries with that?'
More as the story breaks.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
That's all very nice. It's not particularly interesting to point out that a talented player of any game, even with mediocre equipment, will beat out a neophyte who spends more money on equipment. If I trade Andre Agassi my beat-to-shit old tennis raquet for his ultra-high tech piece of engineering, of course he's going to school me.
But your story doesn't in any way support your assertion that it's possible to be a dominating Magic player with less than $20. If you go and take a look at almost any tournament-caliber deck, you're simply not going to find that it contains cards whose aggregate value is less than $100, and $200 and $300 decks are more common. And while a few of them are under that, even around $70 in the case of the UG Mongrel deck that won the Louisville PTQ, I can guarantee you that the guy who played that deck spent *far* more than that amount to reach the level of proficiency to allow him to take a tournament with it.
I've played Kill Dr. Lucky, The Big Idea, and Brawl, and liked them all, and heard good things about a lot of the rest.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Real people have levels, they are just hard to quantify.
:)
I'm a Programmer/Analyst level 5/4 myself
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
OGF is the foundation, OGL = Open Gaming License. You have to copy a part of the OGL into any D20 product you publish.
"It takes a very long time to count to 2 in binary." ~'Fourlegged'
I remember that in the years I played D&D, AD&D, Star Frontiers, and a handful of other RPGs, I wasted the most money on AD&D books because they are chocked full of crap nobody ever really uses in game play. What I mean is, it's about weapons and combat and who can honestly say they didn't end up making up their own bastardization of the rules just to keep the roleplay flowing? Who really runs the whole tedious AD&D combat sequence?
The genre isn't dead. I have friends developing a streamlined game system that keeps all the stuff you want in a fantasy RPG, but leaves out all the complicated unwieldly combat rules (which I vaugely remember evolved out of a naval combat boardgame) that turn roleplaying into arguments about how to roll dice in a particular situation.
I'll cheer if the D&D books go out of print, and the copyrights go undefended. That's because they trademark stupid things like "halfling" because the Tolkien pricks trademarked "Hobbit". It's stupid. Besides, all my old tattered and rotting books may eventually be worth something then...
All I know is that if D&D books go out of print because WoTC goes out of business before anyone (who cares) buys up the rights, it won't stop the old fogeys. Nobody *REALLY* needs any new D&D rules (D20) anyways. Everyone always ends up making things up as they go along, and that's fine with or without WoTC.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I have to say something in reply to this as I've recently been talking with some other long term roleplayers about different products & different Publishers...
We decided that most games (even GURPS the generic roleplaying system) have their niches which they do well... Outside of those niches some systems break & some just aren't fun...
<a href="www.wizards.com">D&D</a> is good at fantasy settings & as their Star wars RPG shows it starts to lack when asked to do something else...
<a href="www.sjgames.com">GURPS</a> does alot of settings well, but is more complex & so looses it's fun when you try not to be complex... For instance it's vehicle rules are better than most, but it's a drawn out process to flesh out a GURPS vehicle, so unless you find that complexity fun it's not for you...
<a href="www.guardiansorder.on.ca">BESM & SAS</a> are designed for Anime/Manga style games (BESM or Big Eyes Small Mouth) & Silver age comics based games (SAS or Silver Age Sentinels). BESM is horrible at modeling real world situations & SAS isn't much better...
<a href="www.palladiumbooks.com">Rifts</a> & the other related Palladium games/licenses did a good job of modeling the settings desired, but due to the lack of depth in equipment things have gone to the power gamers & munchkins who abuse the rules...
<a href="http://www.white-wolf.com/">White Wolf's WoD</a> games are good at forcing roleplay, but combat isn't very defined & equipment/skills are simplistic...
I could go on, but if you look at the examples you may see the pattern... Certain systems model certain things & situations better than others. The idea shouldn't be that one RPG publishing company is better or hungrier, or newer, or anything... It should be that you look at each systems unique advantages & disadvantages & pick the best to meet the needs of the group...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
you'll get my DMs guide when you pry it from my cold dead Gauntlets of Ogre Power.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You should ammend that with "Between two players of equal caliber, the winner will generally be the person with the most disposable income."
Magic is one third skill, one third deckbuilding and one third luck.
Thanks to the Internet, getting a good deck design isn't that difficult; it's simply getting the cards themselves that's difficult. That's where *money* comes in.
Don't kid yourselves that this isn't true, everyone. Even years ago, when I still played MtG, people were complaining about "TheDojo symdrome"; where people would check theDojo for killer decks and then build/buy them. I don't know how true this is for Magic now, but at the time, Magic was being dominated by combo decks that required very little skill or luck to pull off two or three turn kills.
Money is a *huge* factor and in the right tournament environment, it can be the only factor.
As for the people who say "Just play Draft or Sealed", I'm sorry, but not everyone can afford to drop $20+ to play a single tournament. Even if it doesn't affect the actual gameplay, money is a barrier to actually *playing*.
My entire group got tired of the upgrade treadmill and seeing their cards be relegated to infrequent extended tourneys. And this was at the University of Washington, just *blocks* from WotC's (now defunct) game center!
What did we play instead of Magic? Pinochle and Great Dalmuti. Don't laugh. With the right group of people, Pinochle can be an exciting, fast paced, fun-to-watch card game.
I picked up the original Cyberpunk rpg at a game con 10+ years ago. Their combat system Friday Night Fire Fight was an exhaustive statistical work culled from numerous reports on inner city gun usage- most "fire fights" were in dark alleys, a few quick shots exchanged at close range and they weren't very "successful."
So they had an incredibly indepth system that was a bitch to use.
When Cyberpunk 2020 came out they revised the combat. It was like pure heaven. It was easy! You pointed and shot, you said bang, your gun said "bang", damaged got doled out and you were done. They also completely vamped up their net-running section. And we had hours of fun.
If you want realism, walk outside. Otherwise give me streamlined, bastardized, home brewed specifically for our current campaign.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
All I can say is, D&D survived without Gygax, and it will keep going without Jeff Grubb and company. WOTC and Hasbro can both go out of business for that matter, and it won't stop anybody from playing.
It's well written and right on the matter:
http://montecook.com/anrant.html
In the case of a company like Avalon Hill, which made dozens of complex games for adults, this means that essentially the entire product line gets chopped. Which is exactly what happened to AH.
The husband of a friend of mine was a toy designer. I remember talking to him once when he was near tears: he had seen one company destroyed by Hasbro, had quit and moved to another company, only to have two more toy companies suffer the same Hasbro-Borg fate. He was getting tired of moving and running out of good companies to work for; he doubted there would be any high quality toys on the market when Hasbro got finished (seen any Goloob Action Fleet lately?)
sPh
Really? I guess that makes me a Sysadmin 4/Comic Nerd 3/Movie Buff 3/Gamer 1. That's about a level a year since I turned 18. Not bad! Now all I have to do is hire a wizard to dispel some of these age-based penalties...
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
This was greatly improved in their derivative AEon system. AEon had a constant difficulty threshold, and more challenging tasks required more successes. This shifted the balance away from luck (the WoD system) towards skill (the AEon system), since more skill meant more dice to throw at this target number. The WoD system scaled the difficulty number, offsetting your skill level and resulting in the counterintuitve results you mentioned.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
2. GURPS features provide for many of the wants and needs of the players/characters, but not all of them. Other game systems have different blind spots, making them a better choice in some instances.
3. The "look and feel" of GURPS isn't appealing to some groups of players.
Calling it a "generic universal role-playing system" doesn't make it one. To paraphrase my .sig, "you try to front with lames / published by Steve Jackson Games".
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The genre isn't dead. I have friends developing a streamlined game system [igsgames.com] that keeps all the stuff you want in a fantasy RPG,
Try Earthdawn. It has a slick (IMO) dice system and a great world setting. Living Room Games resurrected it after FASA killed it off; not long before FASA went belly-up themselves.
From Monte Cook: "Hasbro did not save WotC. If you're thinking this, you might be confusing the time WotC bought TSR. TSR was rapidly going out of business, and WotC, from a certain point of view, "saved" the company. Hasbro bought WotC when WotC had more money than it knew what to do with. Most (although not all) of the downsizing and layoffs that have affected WotC since then have come because of Hasbro, not WotC. WotC, since Habro bought it, has been one of the largest contributors of that company's bottom line. If anything, WotC saved Hasbro--at least for the last couple of years."
It would be nice, if the people writing it could actually code. Instead, you get weekly bug fixes that are actually bug releases.
Clear, Dark Skies
"Elbereth Habeas Corpus!", cried the Armani-clad knight as he swung his +3 Firebrand (tm, registered, patent pending, copyright) down upon the arms of the bespectacled Mage, which at that moment were holding an open Holy Tome over one of the Demonic alters - a shaft of light and a macabre hum emanating from it's heart. A single word, "Xerox", emblazoned on the front...
There's a lot of insinuation about WoTC executive greed/money-grubbing going on - which may be the case, but it is also a very hard time for any business to stay afloat. Still, with the relative success of the d20 system, I expected WoTC to be in the black for some time (although I've heard it said that they only make money on the sales of Player's Handbooks - don't quite follow why.)
Monte Cook's rant has some fine points, but no specific names or facts about WoTC. It does seem that somebody has decided to squeeze the venerable D&D turnip, or perhaps killing the goose is a better analogy - ok, they're doing something they shouldn't be with farmyard items - let's leave it at that. Over the past 20 years (where are them wooden teeth, dad-gum-it!) I've had the pleasure of playing the following gaming systems:
- AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition (missed out on Chainmail!)
- Gamma World
- Traveler
- Top Secret
- Paranoia
- Gangsters
- Chill
- Arms Law/Claw Law/Spell Law
- Empire of the Petal Throne
- GURPS
- AD&D 3rd Edition
- Some others, but my Alzheimer's is acting up again...
Some of these games/rule systems were remarkably complete (sometime to a fault) - others were extremely simple. Still, the success of a given game never depended on just the rule system - it required a creative, fair, and well-paced DM (or what have you) to make it all work.So, what's my point? (Hey, this is /., do I need one?) Forget the gaming system. Get a good group of creative people together, crank out your own house-brew, and battle on.
If you see an Orc in the road, kill it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. -- James Klass
Seriously. I believe that they are just ousting the top paid people at WoTC to save some bucks.
Which might not be a bad thing, since I believe at this point they can keep D&D alive since they've probably got their "core rules" out. Now they only really need people to make modules and other supplemental material that doesn't require very much work compared to coming up with the d20 system.
D&D will more than likely survive for several years in the "3rd. Edition" format. It won't surprise me if Hasbro will be forced to sell WoTC or D&D off after a few years, however. This could lead to "4th. Edition..." but who knows when this will happen.
Even if they went out of business tomorrow, it wouldn't stop me from playing Dungeons and Dragons, since I have rules for both 2nd. and 3rd. Editions lying around. (Even though this seems to be blasphemy to some, I prefer 3rd. over 2nd... but that is a different discussion altogether).
The books are out there. There are still plenty of people who play 2nd. Edition and even 1st. Edition! People aren't going to stop playing D&D or other Pen and Paper RPGs because of stuff like this.
The thing is that I've heard the Epic Level Handbook was selling like mad. Maybe the figures I've heard are wrong. Or maybe Hasbro is playing B.S. corporate politics. Who knows?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Sounds to me like this is an exercise in conspicuous consuption rather than anything that would interest me.
At least with other types of sport equipment the design of the technology is a major challenge in itself. With magic there is no technology, only artificial scarcity.
How about a charity tournament in which the cards are printed out on demand by laser printer at $20 a deck? Nah, much better give the money to some Enron like corporation run by one of George W's buddies.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Sorry to be redundant, but I think this argument benefits from restating the obvious:
I still play D&D with the same books I recieved as birthday presents TWENTY YEARS AGO. The only thing I've purchased repeatedly are new dragon dice! (How many of you salivate when you hear the term "dragon dice"?).
I haven't purchased a new D&D book since Dieties and Demigods!
I just wish I hadn't written my name all over my books with a big red crayon...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I honestly don't understand what people over 12 like about the moronic Hasbro edition of D&D. It strikes me as the worst rules yet. There are people who know how to right good rules, because they know something about roleplaying. Such people are Gary Gygax, Dave Anerson, and everyone involved in the wonderful Hackmaster project. Compare their work to the Hasbro edition in terms of atmostphere and playability, and weep.
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.
I agree, but what about Magic: The Gathering? I'm much more fond of not buying a new set of cards every 3 months, but some people are. The rules for magic are set out, but they keep adapting them and adding things to them, at the same time adding new concept cards and series.
Is magic affected? I assume it's their cash cow, but...
~Will
sig?
First edition AD&D had class and content and consistency and charm.
First edition had huge problems. Any role playing that happened was despite the hinderance of the game mechanics. I still have the stack of addon rules that my group wrote. If we added a character generation and advancement system we would have had a complete role playing game. The wealth of extra rules that used to flood the net is testament that my group was not the only one frustrated by the First edition system.
I will agree that 2nd should not have seen the light of day. 3rd Edition though is really quite good. All the mechanics have been cleaned up. The system is very flexible and easy to use. It allows DMs to concentrate on story telling and not rule creation. As always the rules are only there if you want to use them. Ofcourse if you don't drop your prejudice against the 3rd ed rules you won't see the elegance.
then dumb down the 5 products to a 4th grade level
But in the case of the Avalon Hill line this is not what happened. Initially this is what Hasbro wanted to do. I have no doubt about that. However that is not what they ended up doing. The Axis&Allies stuff is unchanged. Shogun did get a stupid name change to Samurai Swords, but is otherwise identical. And while the new Risk 3025(??) looks dumb, it is actually a pretty decent game. I was as shocked as anyone. I expected to play it once and shelve it. What is left of the original Avalon Hill line would not be published today if Hasbro wasn't distributing. There really isn't a big market for these games any more.
Someone at an earlier post mentioned that a lot of other RPG companies have moved away from Level-based development.
This might be a mysterious coincidence, or it could be the result of WotC trying to enforce their patent... I can see companies prefering to change their system vs paying tithe or fighting what is quite possibly an invalid patent.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
sPh
I reread what I wrote and I see that I look like a Hasbro fanboy. I am not. Hasbro is just another company. However I dislike the anti Hasbro sentiment. It is too easy to blame a company that has probably had a neutral effect on D&D. It is harder to take an honest critical look at the darling WotC.
Damn. I live in California, USA, so I guess that won't work... :(
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Sometimes I just want to get together with some friends, relax, chat some, and play a role-playing game. Something simple, something that every gamer knows inside and out, something that gamemaster can easily whip something up for, something with some of the guilty viseral pleasure of beating up bad guys and taking their stuff. Something simple, both in rules and roles.
When I began playing RPGs, I played D&D because it was the default. When I matured, I played more serious, innovative games like Vampire: The Masquerade, GURPs, and other games. I derided D&D as a waste. Now that I'm older, busy with work and other things, I appreciate D&D again. My life is complex and full or hard choices. The D&D game I play in is a simple pleasure, low stress for everyone.
Also, you cannot ignore that 3e D&D has really helped revitalize the RPG industry. Things were slowing down and growth minimal. D&D brought the simple excitement back, brough back people who hadn't played in years, and brought in new players. Potential new players generally aren't going to try a more experimental system. They're looking for something simple that they can appreciate instantly. That game is D&D. And those new players will be looking for new games in a few years. That's your opportunity to introduce them to more mature games. Everyone wins!
There is a place for every sort of game, be they mature or not. I still run Deadlands, Psychosis, Call of Cthulhu, and other more "mature" games, and I love them. Don't insult D&D, it still has a place in my life and the lives of millions of other gamers. If it isn't your cup of tea, just leave it be.
..is a good idea. Or a bad idea, in terms of my schedule...
I would guess that WotC is going to move to a contract-based model with regards to their writers - pay-per-work as opposed to paying them salary. In the end the writers and WotC are more flexible in terms of their output. :^)
I tend to agree with the above comments about the d20 system. While they improved some aspects (Feats, Skills), it's basically the same old recycled crap (Armor Class, Level-based Hit Points, Classes) from the previous editions. The system is heavily biased towards cinematic/high-fantasy games (i.e. characters with god-like abilities), and needs serious work to do anything else. I do think it's better than either 1st Ed. or 2nd Ed., though. To quote James Wallis, "I have enormous respect for what it's achieved in terms of dragging D&D's rules into the late 1980s [...]" Of course, the d20 rules were released only a couple years ago...
The Future: Some assembly required; batteries not included.
That's an outstanding quote... although has there really been that much improvement in RPG systems since the late 19080's? After that, the trading card games started stealing mindshare, and the entire RPG world kind of stagnated, to the point that people started thinking of computer games as "computer RPG's" for no other reason than the fantasy settings.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.