Quote from: Fheredin on April 17, 2025, 05:56:20 PMTo be blunt, there is absolutely no point in Hasbro selling WotC unless they are way far into bankruptcy and literally will cease to be soon. Hasbro has been in a deep septic tank since their Star Wars Sequel Trilogy toys started rotting on shelves, but MTG has continued to be a major earner.

At the moment, Hasbro seems bent on strip-mining the MTG and D&D IPs for whatever they can get to keep the rest of the machinery afloat. That would be a good decision if they had plans for how to keep the rest of the business afloat, but I have seen zero evidence to that effect. I think Hasbro will continue down this path until it breaks, and that means that their only remaining IPs will be completely strip-mined of all value and customer good will before bankruptcy. Zero dollars may literally be a good price because it would have to go on hiatus the instant you bought it to let customer ire cool down.

I will be honest: I have plenty of ideas for how you could handle Magic: The Gathering after being sold off. It would not be as profitable as it is for Hasbro right now, but Hasbro is also giving WotC marching orders to be 1000% predatory.

But D&D?

I am starting to think that once D&D lapses into proper unprofitability, D&D will probably need to be curtain-called for good. The indie RPG and OSR spaces are already starting to running circles around it, and this will take off in earnest if D&D stumbles. What are you actually going to do with D&D which is both faithful to being D&D and which an OSR game can't already do as well or better? Not much. 

Once the D&D playerbase figures that out, the IP is dead. This isn't even something you can go on hiatus to fix, because relaunching D&D 7E in 2054 will have many of the exact same big picture problems 5.5 did in 2024. The D&D IP could pass from owner to owner a dozen times and never escape this cycle to reclaim market dominance.

5E bought in:
Advantage Mechanic
Spell Slots
Bounded Accuracy

The three were new concepts to D&D.  All it takes is for someone to have a few good ideas, bring them into D&D for a new edition and it will sell as good as 5E.

That being said, Hasbro has created brand damage for D&D close to Disney Star Wars level of damage.  Hasbro will not meet a 5E level of sales if it has Hasbro's name.  Hasbro should license out D&D for a decade and let someone else fix their mess.

Wyatt's approach in 4e was the exact opposite of Crawford in 5e. At the time I thought he went way overboard with "DnD is about killing horrible monsters, not traipsing through fairy rings talking with the little people" - but with the game in need of a severe course correction this may be a good sign. Certainly the world building and tone in 4e was very good, the problem was the endless slog of the combat system.

And now the CEO of Steve Jackson Games has quit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ohs0Gb0rIY.

Coincidence, or a theme for 2025?

Quote from: Krazz on April 18, 2025, 05:08:40 PMAnd now the CEO of Steve Jackson Games has quit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ohs0Gb0rIY.

Coincidence, or a theme for 2025?

hilarious video

"Jay Dragon" Steve's new transgender head of game design

Jackson says he didn't expect this year to be good for business--but still felt he needed to make political and ideological pronouncements on social media and alienate customers

wasn't he one of the clowns who signed the "gamers4harris" petition?

while his company has made some decent games in the last few decades (car wars, munchkin, some of the dice games), he has had a lot of failures as well, and I don't think GURPs ever went anywhere

I'll give him a few more years before he closes down

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on April 18, 2025, 04:48:36 PM5E bought in:
Advantage Mechanic
Spell Slots
Bounded Accuracy

The three were new concepts to D&D.  All it takes is for someone to have a few good ideas, bring them into D&D for a new edition and it will sell as good as 5E.

That being said, Hasbro has created brand damage for D&D close to Disney Star Wars level of damage.  Hasbro will not meet a 5E level of sales if it has Hasbro's name.  Hasbro should license out D&D for a decade and let someone else fix their mess.

I don't think you actually understand the issue. From the point of view of a D&D player moving from 4E to 5E, these are a big deal, but from the point of view of a player coming back to D&D from OSR, they are significantly less impressive. These innovations are almost worthless coming in from the larger indie RPG scene outside of OSR. And more to the point, the thing with innovation is that it becomes more difficult each time you do it because you can't do the same innovation twice.

This combination of players getting exposed to indie or OSR games and innovation getting more difficult means that at best, there's probably only one good edition of D&D left. However, the way it's being managed by WotC makes me think they believe there are zero good editions of D&D left. If you wanted to innovate, you would keep your hands on your most experienced talent, so the fact they have had several notable departures tells you that WotC probably does not intend to put much effort into innovating D&D.

The only option that's left is a new genius employee. I will believe it when I see it.

Don't worry. I can fix DND. I have a plan.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 16, 2025, 08:05:30 AMI think you need to recheck your math.  It being zero now that Crawford left implies that it was in the negatives before that event.  Admittedly, that might be correct.

Well played, sir!