Did I mention that Hasbro will never, ever, sell off D&D?

I think I did.

Quote from: Mistwell on February 11, 2021, 06:20:26 PM

Quote from: Jaeger on February 11, 2021, 02:02:02 AM
Just look at Marvel as a good example. The Marvel print Comics division is shit. Perpetual declining sales numbers, annually laid off staff, with no upswing in sight.

I keep hearing this. I guess it made some geek news circles and nobody every questioned it and just takes it as gospel.

So let's start with comics in general:
...

No let's not. No one was talking about "comics in general."* No one.

Holy Crap dude. I was actually agreeing with your larger point, which made up the majority of my post! And then you climb back on this molehill to die on?

What part of me mentioning Marvel or DC Comics leads you to believe that I'm talking about anything else but Marvel and DC Superhero Comics? Worth noting that I explicitly used the phrasing "Marvel print Comics division" in my post that you directly quoted!

No one else but you seems to have a problem getting this.

You didn't "keep hearing this". This argument already happened. You did question it. Got told.

Busted this bit of deflection in this thread:
https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/will-the-current-woke-environment-hasten-or-delay-a-wotc-commitment-to-6th-ed/msg1161368/#msg1161368

A reference for those who don't want to read the other thread all the way:

Quote from: Superhero Comics HATE FACTS on January 18, 2021, 10:37:47 PM

The Below was current as of late 2017:

Marvel filed for bankruptcy in 1996.

In 2007 Marvel took in 45% unit market share. Marvel was on a roll, Iron Man came out the next year, which brought in $585 Million at the box office.

In 2009 it was bought for $4 Billion by Disney. An incredible turn around. Unfortunately, by then Marvel had become entirely converged.

What's more, the security of being owned by Disney allowed the Marvel executives to let their Social justice Freak Flag Fly. It would be hard to find a SJW cause that Marvel has not Relentlessly pushed. Everything from LGBTQ, Body-positive Obesity, feminism, and pushing comics that tried race/gender flipping a good chunk of their iconic characters.

When Marvel got pushback after introducing  Spider-Man replacement Miles Morales in 2011, Marvel Marvel's editor in chief Axel Alonzo responded "Simple fact is Marvel Comics reflect the world in all its shapes, sizes and colors. We believe there's an audience of people out there who are thirsty for a character like Miles Morales." Original Spider-Man creator Stan Lee voiced his support saying "Doing our bit to try to make our nation, and the world, color blind is definitely the right thing."

But whether doing their bit to impose color blindness on the world is right or not, their belief in the size of that audience was evidently misguided.

Six years later, Axel Alonso was out of a job, the most recent issue of Spider-Man featuring Peter Parker had sold close to a million units, while the Miles Morales version has seen one series after another shut down after 12 issues or so. After one year, Brian Michael Bendis' new comic chronicling the further adventures of Miles Morales had lost almost two-thirds of its readership.

As a result of its convergence, despite an almost ten-year string of successful movies that constantly advertised its famous characters to the public, Marvel as of 2017 was still the #1 seller but at a 39% unit market share. It was a comic industry in decline. Single issue sales declined 10.40% and graphic novel sales declined 9.38%, for a total drop of 10.09% over 2016. In fact July 2017 Sold 25% fewer comics than July 2016.

How did Marvel stay #1 in a declining market?

Because their closest competitor, DC comics had decided early on that they, under no circumstances whatsoever, would allow DC comics to become less woke than Marvel...

fast forward to 2020:

As we have seen in the time of the Corona-Chan, when people have more time than ever to stay home and read:

Print book sales actually rose 8% in 2020:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/85256-print-unit-sales-rose-8-2-in-2020.html

Yet...

You have Marvel doing things like this late last year:
Disney Axes Two Top Marvel Employees In Latest Round Of Job Cuts:
https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/11/09/disney-axes-two-top-marvel-employees-marvel-in-latest-round-of-job-cuts/

And hear things like this being bandied about DC comics:
DC COMICS WILL CLOSE DOWN IN JUNE SAYS RUMOR
https://cosmicbook.news/dc-comics-closing-down-june

This is really not that hard.

FYI for future reference and all that: If someone comments on Marvel or DC comics; they mean Marvel or DC comics. You know, the ones with all the famous superhero's in them. They are not talking about "comics in general".

Marvel and DC Comics = Marvel and DC comics.    Work on that.  I have every confidence you'll get it.


Back to the point.

In past history Magic was better earner for WOTC, but D&D has always had more overall potential as an exploitable IP.

5e D&D as a game is doing absolute gangbusters right now. It's silly. They've been selling hardbacks by the boatload just retreading old AD&D material! Almost a license to print money with no end in sight.

But going woke does funny things. Dr. WHO once rode high, but recently has been plagued by rumors of outright cancellation. Some think that might be due to the fact that when they started turning out woke garbage they alienated a lot of their fanbase who then stopped watching. But those people are probably just misogynist racists, and the real fans will come rushing back next season now that all the toxic elements of the fanbase have been purged and can no longer gatekeep.

Which is why NOW is a good time for Hasbro to try and put over D&D as a Brand so that it can bring in big $$$ without RPG sales. They got a movie, they are working on a tv series. And if those hit you bet they will pound out the novelization books, toys and YA novels to follow!

If Hasbro succeeds in what they are doing, then they could likely give a toss how woke the RPG line gets.

But, if they don't, and they let WOTC dial up the woke...

That being said. D&D has made such huge gains the past few years that they probably could literally alienate half of their audience, and still be the #1 selling RPG by a pretty big margin.

Between WOTC and Baizuo the cost of real competition for the top RPG spot - even if they do pull Chinballs Dr.Who moves, is higher than ever.

Even with 4e level errors it will prove very difficult for D&D as a game to not be the #1 RPG. We need to remember that if WOTC has been even a little bit more johnny on the spot with their 4e SRD, Baizuo would have stayed a D&D 4e 3pp...

With no one out there to pull their card over the 4e nonsense, D&D as a Brand might be in a very different place today.



*IMHO - If illustrated kids books now count as comics, then the time has come when we must all recognize the One True King of comic books: Dr. Seuss

All Hail.

Quote from: Jaeger on February 18, 2021, 11:53:08 PM
*IMHO - If illustrated kids books now count as comics, then the time has come when we must all recognize the One True King of comic books: Dr. Seuss

The definitions can be tricky and the border can be fuzzy, but there's a widespread agreement that Archie, Tijuana Bibles, and Maus are comics and Doctor Seuss and Roald Dahl's books are not. Manga and the kid's comics on the comic books lists all seem to fall into the first category.

Quote from: Jaeger on February 18, 2021, 11:53:08 PM

*IMHO - If illustrated kids books now count as comics, then the time has come when we must all recognize the One True King of comic books: Dr. Seuss

All Hail.

All hail Dr. Seuss!

Quote from: Jaeger on February 18, 2021, 11:53:08 PM
No one else but you seems to have a problem getting this.

You didn't "keep hearing this". This argument already happened. You did question it. Got told.

You have to understand about Mistwell being one of the resident SJWs it's all about his carefully constructed personal narratives on a subject.

In this case he will never ever admit even under penalty of torture that SJW writers and woke authors and story lines have hurt comic sales immensely.

As it goes against the narrative and anything against the narrative does exist and is to be summarily ignored.

Which is why he is ignoring declining sales when it comes to Marvel and DC and bringing up every other kinds of comics as smokescreen to ignore having to actually debate the lack of sales. It's a pattern of continually moving goalposts and he will of course adamantly deny doing so.

Huh. I thought non-woke people liked Miles Morales. Although that could've just been the movie stripping out all the bad writing.

I liked Miles Morales a lot in the movies and the console game, and I'm about as non-woke as it gets.  And this is after expecting to hate him because most woke media is objectively terrible and pushes evil and/or stupid agendas.  He's a likable character, it's a good story, and the stories aren't really woke otherwise.  I haven't read the books though, so I can't speak to that.

Quote from: Mishihari on February 19, 2021, 10:03:15 AM
I liked Miles Morales a lot in the movies and the console game, and I'm about as non-woke as it gets.  And this is after expecting to hate him because most woke media is objectively terrible and pushes evil and/or stupid agendas.  He's a likable character, it's a good story, and the stories aren't really woke otherwise.  I haven't read the books though, so I can't speak to that.

In the books hes basicallynwritten to be as bland and inoffensive as possible. And like all teen heroes he's a super genius who for some rrason never uses gadgets for crime fighting (iirc it was either him or Ms. Marvel that had like an anti-gravity fish tank that suspended water in mid aid...yet none of them things using similar tech to actually fly would be helpful)

I was not a fan of Miles Morales though enjoyed the animated movie with the character.

Even then it's not the character that made me stop reading DC and Marvel for the most part. It was the shitty SJW storylines and art. Heaven forbid any female character look remotely sexual let alone female lets draw them as looking as male as possible. I could get past that yet when every evil is due to straight white men in the setting (apprently only white men can commit evil in Marvel) fuck that saving my money.

Instead of trying to stop the Titanic from leaking with both comic companies they instead find new ways to make it sink faster.

Quote from: Pat on February 19, 2021, 05:05:36 AM
The definitions can be tricky and the border can be fuzzy, but there's a widespread agreement that Archie, Tijuana Bibles, and Maus are comics and Doctor Seuss and Roald Dahl's books are not. Manga and the kid's comics on the comic books lists all seem to fall into the first category.

Thank you for explaining the panelist elitism that is gatekeeping Dr. Suess from his rightful place in history.

Quote from: RandyB on February 19, 2021, 08:16:06 AM

All hail Dr. Seuss!

Hail Seuss!

Peace be upon him.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 19, 2021, 08:44:00 AM
Huh. I thought non-woke people liked Miles Morales. Although that could've just been the movie stripping out all the bad writing.

Quote from: Mishihari on February 19, 2021, 10:03:15 AM
I liked Miles Morales a lot in the movies and the console game, and I'm about as non-woke as it gets.  And this is after expecting to hate him because most woke media is objectively terrible and pushes evil and/or stupid agendas.  He's a likable character, it's a good story, and the stories aren't really woke otherwise.  I haven't read the books though, so I can't speak to that.

Mike Morales rejection in the comics has a lot to do with the fact that by Marvel's own admission he was explicitly pushed as part of their woke agenda. And although in the hands of different writers for the movie and video game, the reason you keep seeing him pop-up as "SpiderMan" when everyone would be perfectly happy with Peter Parker, is because he is pushed.

Ever wonder why in the latest Avengers video game the starting character you play is Muslim Captain Marvel Kamala Khan? A character that was not in a single Marvel universe film? Because Marvel said so. How do I know this? Because I know someone who works at Crystal Dynamics and did a lot of the character animation for the game. And I asked him how one of the most cancelled and renewed over and over again Comic characters became their pick to star in the new Avengers game. What he was told: "Marvel gives the writing team the characters they have to use with the license."

You really think Kamala Khan wound up as the lead character in a game trying to cash in on the Marvel Movies success by accident? Do you really think Miles Morales was chosen over Peter Parker by the video game developers for the latest Spider Man game? 

However benign they might try and make it seem, it is all pushed for ideological reasons.

I have nothing against Miles Morales as long as he is not the resident Spider Man. Kid Arachnid? With completely different super-powers? No problem with that.

But there's only one Spider Man, and his name is Peter Parker.

Quote from: sureshot on February 20, 2021, 10:15:40 AM
Even then it's not the character that made me stop reading DC and Marvel for the most part. It was the shitty SJW storylines and art. Heaven forbid any female character look remotely sexual let alone female lets draw them as looking as male as possible. I could get past that yet when every evil is due to straight white men in the setting (apprently only white men can commit evil in Marvel) fuck that saving my money.

Instead of trying to stop the Titanic from leaking with both comic companies they instead find new ways to make it sink faster.

Exactly. I stopped reading mainstream comics around 2011/2012 for this very reason. The only Marvel and DC comics I've bought in the last ten years or so are paperbacks of pre-2010 story arcs.

The only comics I read now are independent stuff (like Soulfinder, Red Rooster, The Futurists, Bass Reeves, Peregrine, AI Wars, Flying Sparks).

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 09, 2021, 05:21:22 PM
The now shell company White Wolf is more likely to get sold.

Aside from the tabletop scene being riddled with scandals ranging from writers being pedophiles to inciting an international incident, Paradox has been whoring out the IP Games Workshop-style to produce games. These are mediocre low-budget mobile shovelware or "visual novels" on Steam. If the reviews and SteamSpy estimates are any indication, they're not exactly what you would call amazing critical or commercial successes. Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars was apparently way more popular despite a mixed reception.

The first big budget title to release so far was Werewolf: Earthblood, which had mixed reception at best according to Metacritic. Vampire: Bloodlines 2 has been subject to a bunch of interference that will likely cause it to suffer similar failure, in addition to just failing to live up to its predecessor.

Question is... who would be both willing and able to buy White Wolf?

I can describe two huge reasons not to touch this IP with a ten-foot pole.

Firstly: It has never had a successful video game release, to the point where the superstitious might claim it is cursed. Vampire: Bloodlines was a flop on release and is only remembered as a cult classic (and that was due solely to Troika's writing rather than any inherent strength of the IP), and Paradox was apparently unwilling and/or unable to remaster the game. Its continued livelihood seems to riding entirely on the success of Vampire: Bloodlines 2. (Before anybody chimes in, no company that isn't already a tabletop company is going to buy it just to sell tabletop games and I don't see many tabletop companies being both willing and able to buy the IP when they could just invent their own.)

Secondly: The IP's value in general is questionable at best. It's firmly stuck in this weird 90s proto-SJW zeitgeist that probably won't appeal to normies or modern SJWs either. Every individual aspect is either awesome, stupid, or insane with nothing in between and nothing in the way of any cohesive aesthetic: time traveling vampires, eco-terrorist werewolves, militantly luddite wizards, reincarnating fairies who are allergic to concrete, etc. It's not remotely creative (VtM's clans are mostly direct rip-offs of popular and obscure works of vampire fiction, such as Necroscope and 3×3 Eyes, as well as non-vampire fiction like Conan the Barbarian) and while mildly diverse in concepts it has no monopoly on the many tropes of the urban fantasy genre. The existing fanbase is extremely toxic, cultish, twenty years ago sent so many death threats to writer Jess Henig that made him afraid to open his inbox for years, other negative descriptors... I'm not sure why any sane company would want to court these loonies.

IMO, if what you want is a profitable vampire-themed CRPG et al, then you're probably better off either inventing your own or licensing a vampire IP that isn't seemingly cursed. Like Bloodlust: Shadowhunter or Red Embrace.

What do you think?

If I had the money, I'd probably buy White Wolf and do what I could to fix it.

Hell, I'm pretty sure you could probably buy New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a very low price if you found a way to get in contact with the right people. Paradox outright stated they have zero interest in Requiem or any of the CofD IP's outside of collecting the licensing fee checks from Onyx Path.

Quote from: This Ends Tonight on February 09, 2021, 01:36:57 PM
2020 WAS RECORD YEAR FOR 'MAGIC,' 'D&D'

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47547/2020-was-record-year-magic-d-d

I know ICV2 ran an article about them selling WotC before, but it seems like a great time for Hasbro to find an excuse to divest themselves of these troublesome Millennials, and avoid worrying about staying on top of a volatile market. Not to mention the impending end to 'geek culture' being cool, at which time they run the risk of losing half their fanbase. It may not be true in the very short term, but it just feels like there's nowhere to go but down for most of the TTRPG industry, especially for those who don't focus on veteran/alpha gamer types who are less likely to quit on a whim.

Unfortunately, the converged parts of the company are not causing enough hemorrhaging of players and support to justify Hasbro cutting them loose. Yet.

Unless they make a massive PR mistake like White Wolf made in 5th Edition Vampire (and I'm not at all surprised by the implication that some of that company's writing staff were pedos), WOTC and D&D will stay under the Hasbro umbrella for a while yet.

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 08:27:24 PM
If I had the money, I'd probably buy White Wolf and do what I could to fix it.

Hell, I'm pretty sure you could probably buy New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a very low price if you found a way to get in contact with the right people. Paradox outright stated they have zero interest in Requiem or any of the CofD IP's outside of collecting the licensing fee checks from Onyx Path.

Some things are better left dead.

Strange Aeons and all that jazz...

Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 22, 2021, 09:47:29 PM

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 08:27:24 PM
If I had the money, I'd probably buy White Wolf and do what I could to fix it.

Hell, I'm pretty sure you could probably buy New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a very low price if you found a way to get in contact with the right people. Paradox outright stated they have zero interest in Requiem or any of the CofD IP's outside of collecting the licensing fee checks from Onyx Path.

Some things are better left dead.

Strange Aeons and all that jazz...

Possibly, but if I do get the means to acquire the New WoD/Chronicles of Darkness license or IP, I will do it come Hell or high water.

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 10:01:04 PM

Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 22, 2021, 09:47:29 PM

Quote from: Doc Sammy on February 22, 2021, 08:27:24 PM
If I had the money, I'd probably buy White Wolf and do what I could to fix it.

Hell, I'm pretty sure you could probably buy New World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness for a very low price if you found a way to get in contact with the right people. Paradox outright stated they have zero interest in Requiem or any of the CofD IP's outside of collecting the licensing fee checks from Onyx Path.

Some things are better left dead.

Strange Aeons and all that jazz...

Possibly, but if I do get the means to acquire the New WoD/Chronicles of Darkness license or IP, I will do it come Hell or high water.

Incoming rant alert. Feel free to ignore if you don't like that sort of thing.

I don't understand why Paradox is even interested in the Classic/Old World of Darkness. It hit its peak in the 90s and has declined ever since. None of the video games have been commercial hits. Bloodlines 1 flopped on release and is only remembered because of Troika's writing rather than any strength of the IP. Earthblood was a flop. The IP isn't financially viable at this point.

World of Darkness is firmly stuck in the 90s counterculture movement and doesn't have any viability anymore, because what was counterculture then is pro-culture now. If the game was created from scratch today, then it probably wouldn't resemble what we got in this timeline. It would probably resemble what Chronicles of Darkness could have been if the writers weren't fixated on going out of their way to be different from their predecessors.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse in particular is so outdated. Most governments take climate change seriously. Zero-emissions by 2050 is standard planning now. Reparations for slavery are standard rhetoric now. The World Economic Forum openly discusses their plans to take over the world and institute a communist utopia. Transwomen are coddled on social media. The ACLU states that biological sex is a social construct. Words are considered violence. Blah blah blah. We are living in, or at least on a rapid path to, the world that the writers of Werewolf wanted to see thirty years ago.

New WoD/Chronicles reached its peak with Lost and Vigil. None of the others are interesting to me because they either go out of their way to avoid being too similar to their c/oWoD predecessors (e.g. Requiem not having vampire supremacists, Forsaken not touching real politics, Awakening not having personalized magical traditions, Lost only ever being human-born rather than fairies who adopted humanity), are overshadowed by parochial metaplot (e.g. the strix, father wolf, atlantis, god-machine, irem), and/or aren't anywhere near as creative as Lost and Vigil were. Oh, and the rules are basically garbage in any iteration due to a complete lack of universal rules for superpowers, 2e trying to ape the worst parts of FATE without understanding game design at all, etc.

Pretty much the only reason anybody cares about these games is because of their lore. Which doesn't interest me and I find it parochial anyway. The entire reason I liked the concepts of Lost and Vigil was because they didn't have lore, they had options. A changeling could be a genie, a mermaid, a selkie, a gnome, a goblin, an ogre, a troll, whatever and the rules for doing so were vastly simpler than the arbitrary nightmare of its preceding game. A hunter could be an amateur ghost hunter, an employee of a corporation that harvests monsters for pharmaceuticals, a member of a secret government taskforce, a half-human spawn of the literal Devil, a big game hunter who considers monsters the next logical step, etc.

With Vampire in either iteration, you're playing an Anne Rice knockoff with some superpowers loosely inspired by random works of fiction that may or may not have been about vampires. Unlike Lost or Vigil, you're never given the option to make up whatever concept suits your fancy using a simple set of universal rules. You can't just play a vamphyri with psychic powers and metamorphic flesh, you have to play a shameesay high school clique with all this weird baggage involving sabbaths, babytalk jargon arbitrary pulled from assorted Slavic languages, butchered Slavic folklore, soul eaters and shit.

I don't give a flying fuck about all that bullshit that Mark Asterisk Häagen-Dazs and friends pulled out of their asses thirty years ago. I just want to play a game about some vampires that eat people, have kewl powerz I guess if I don't prefer a straight superhero game, and maybe mope about their lost humanity or whatever the fuck makes them wake up in the evening.

I don't care about however the fuck many clans/bloodlines/high school cliques there are as of the latest editions. Unless you're an anal-retentive autist, then you can shorten the list to just 3 and not lose anything of value. That's how Red Embrace: Hollywood did it and I found the game way less irritating for that genius design choice... not that anybody plays that romance game for its vampire houses.

But whatever, YMMV.