There's been a lot of discussion of WOTC moving to microtransactions as a model for D&D. Details are now coming out as to what the possible nature of that will be.
Right now, DNDBeyond already has microtransactions. You can right now pay for an entire book of content, OR you can buy a microtransaction of things like "just the feats" or "just a subclass" from that book for a smaller fee than the entire book. That's a microtransaction.
They've already mentioned specialized digital minis and dice for their upcoming digital table top.
Here is the survey:
Quote from: WOTC SurveyThese are all of the options listed on the survey as items you should indicate your interest in for future offers:
New Playable Content (feats, spells, magic items, etc.)
Player Aids (handouts or references to share with players during the game)
Art Show (collections of art and images)
Rules (discrete chunks of new rules that are lore agnostic and can be added to any adventure or setting)
"How-To" Guides (options of things that DMs can add to their campaigns along with advice and inspiration)
Serialized Adventures
Sound Effects
Lore Drops (lore and world-building that fleshes out places of interest in D&D settings)
Single, Self Contained Adventures
Short Fiction
Bestiary
Experimental Content to Playtest
To me, a lot of this looks like optional content like you'd find in Dragon and Dungeon magazine years ago, with some added digital aspects. TSR and later WOTC would release what can fairly be described as a subclass (or prestige class in 3e or kits in 2e or alternative classes in 1e, depending on the edition) to Dragon Magazine. Those were microtransactions where you bought the magazine to gain access to the subclass for a few bucks. It wasn't digital, but it was a microtransaction to access optional rules.
Now if they didn't specifically label this stuff as optional, I'd be bothered. But if they put out optional rules for more granular wilderness travel, or an optional Jester subclass, those kinds of things I'd be fine with. If they're good enough, I'd pay for them.
I know the common argument of those who dislike 5e and/or dislike WOTC/Hasbro is to accuse them of planning to introduce microtransactions which either are required to play the game, or which give a power boost to players who buy those microtransactions. I don't think that's where this is headed at all and I've seen zero evidence that's what's planned. I also never viewed buying Dragon or Dungeon magazine to present a new option in one of those magazines to your DM to try and use that content for your PC as a microtransaction that was to gain power or required to play the game either. But if you think that's where this is headed or is already there, I welcome those thoughts. Or any other thoughts on the topic.
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David. Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY. Focusing on Story and Rules are HARD. They are going to release a good looking tool that is hollow to its core. They'll have a year of uptick, and then unexplainably will lose users month over month.
Look at Diablo 3 and their store and what it did to Diablo 3 for player base. Expect loot boxes using skinner box mechanics to teach 13 year old's to gamble. We'll have parent groups coming out against D&D hard on this in a number of countries and DnD Beyond will get banned in a few EU states over loot boxes.
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David. Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY. Focusing on Story and Rules are HARD. They are going to release a good looking tool that is hollow to its core. They'll have a year of uptick, and then unexplainably will lose users month over month.
Look at Diablo 3 and their store and what it did to Diablo 3 for player base. Expect loot boxes using skinner box mechanics to teach 13 year old's to gamble. We'll have parent groups coming out against D&D hard on this in a number of countries and DnD Beyond will get banned in a few EU states over loot boxes.
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?
Agreed. I saw a VTT being talked about on the big burple and it talked about how customizable it is but the players are all sitting around the same table. Whats the point?
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?
Just to be clear, that's been going on already for a long time now.
For 4th edition in 2012 we had the Character Creator that came with all the content for $6.75/mo. And of course there was always Dragon and Dungeon magazine subscriptions before that.
For 5th edition my DM subscribed to the "buy everything" tier from DNDBeyond years ago, before WOTC even owned it, and has continued to add stuff to it when it's released and pay the monthly fee to share that content with all his players in multiple games. I don't even know if they offer that original "buy everything" tier right now since when I looked there was just the Hero tier (can't share with others, $2.17 mo if purchased yearly) or the Master tier (can share with your players, $4.58/mo if purchased yearly) and I don't think either gets to retroactively everything like the old tier did.
Anyway yeah, our primary DM has been paying a monthly fee for years and years now. Lots and lots of people have. I get it not being your thing and your reasons for thinking that's a bad idea for your group, but to be clear it's definitely something some meaningful number of others do think is fine.
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 02:23:03 PM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?
Just to be clear, that's been going on already for a long time now.
For 4th edition in 2012 we had the Character Creator that came with all the content for $6.75/mo. And of course there was always Dragon and Dungeon magazine subscriptions before that.
For 5th edition my DM subscribed to the "buy everything" tier from DNDBeyond years ago, before WOTC even owned it, and has continued to add stuff to it when it's released and pay the monthly fee to share that content with all his players in multiple games. I don't even know if they offer that original "buy everything" tier right now since when I looked there was just the Hero tier (can't share with others, $2.17 mo if purchased yearly) or the Master tier (can share with your players, $4.58/mo if purchased yearly) and I don't think either gets to retroactively everything like the old tier did.
Anyway yeah, our primary DM has been paying a monthly fee for years and years now. Lots and lots of people have. I get it not being your thing and your reasons for thinking that's a bad idea for your group, but to be clear it's definitely something some meaningful number of others do think is fine.
You can buy the books on DnD Beyond, you run the encounter builder, use the search for monsters, build your own homebrew and you can even roll dice on said monsters, all without paying a yearly fee. Your players fill out their sheets and roll dice and are happier than pressing a button and initiate a poor random number generator, because they all are inherently poor random number generators compared to regular dice. There is literally no reason to give D&D Beyond any money beyond buying the digital PDF. I was a subscriber, I no longer am, I notice no change. Players can buy the books, ask for the spell list for their levels OR they go to plenty of sites and look up the spells avaialble for 5E. Don't get me wrong if you want to pay for the subscription, I say go for it. I'm on other VTT's now and could not be happeir.
I wish them the best of Luck but I am a pen & paper player and will remain that way. I also do not require current product to keep playing that way. If they stop producing physical products that I might have purchased if they had something I was interested in and not full of woke bullshit then oh well. Other companies are there to fill the void.
Micro-transactions for micro-brains. ;D
Right now I can go to Roll20 and with the books I own start playing for free.
In WotZi's walled garden I won't be able to do so, I'll have to pay 20 bucks a month plus whatever else they want to cut pout form the game so they can milk even more money from me.
The "it's optional!" excuse is how video games got to a place where they sell you full price a game that they cut out content already in it to later "release" it as an expansion and charge you even more.
But do carry on making excuses for the megacorporation.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 22, 2023, 02:50:41 PM
Right now I can go to Roll20 and with the books I own start playing for free.
In WotZi's walled garden I won't be able to do so, I'll have to pay 20 bucks a month plus whatever else they want to cut pout form the game so they can milk even more money from me.
Self imposed penury. Only the terminally stupid will fall for it.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on August 22, 2023, 02:49:12 PM
I wish them the best of Luck but I am a pen & paper player and will remain that way. I also do not require current product to keep playing that way. If they stop producing physical products that I might have purchased if they had something I was interested in and not full of woke bullshit then oh well. Other companies are there to fill the void.
Exactly. With the OSR there are so many other choices, who needs WOTC?
I run with Maptools, but my players use actual dice and pencil/paper (ironically, I do use PDF character sheets, but they're stored on my computer, not WotC's or anyone else's).
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
I know the common argument of those who dislike 5e and/or dislike WOTC/Hasbro is to accuse them of planning to introduce microtransactions which either are required to play the game, or which give a power boost to players who buy those microtransactions. I don't think that's where this is headed at all and I've seen zero evidence that's what's planned. I also never viewed buying Dragon or Dungeon magazine to present a new option in one of those magazines to your DM to try and use that content for your PC as a microtransaction that was to gain power or required to play the game either. But if you think that's where this is headed or is already there, I welcome those thoughts. Or any other thoughts on the topic.
This comes off as disingenuous to me. I don't know about after the magazines went digital, but people were paying for a whole magazine, not just a small part of the magazine. The fact of the matter is that you couldn't just buy a small portion of the magazine like a page or two on a class or skill, so I would hardly count the magazines as micro transactions. Also factor in that just because you had a class, skill or adventure that you liked didn't mean it was officially part of the game it was optional. Now everything that is put into print, weather digital or physical is all official and there is a push to make it all available in every game.
Quote from: Alden on August 22, 2023, 09:35:54 PM
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
I know the common argument of those who dislike 5e and/or dislike WOTC/Hasbro is to accuse them of planning to introduce microtransactions which either are required to play the game, or which give a power boost to players who buy those microtransactions. I don't think that's where this is headed at all and I've seen zero evidence that's what's planned. I also never viewed buying Dragon or Dungeon magazine to present a new option in one of those magazines to your DM to try and use that content for your PC as a microtransaction that was to gain power or required to play the game either. But if you think that's where this is headed or is already there, I welcome those thoughts. Or any other thoughts on the topic.
Also factor in that just because you had a class, skill or adventure that you liked didn't mean it was officially part of the game it was optional. Now everything that is put into print, weather digital or physical is all official and there is a push to make it all available in every game.
Like I said, "
Now if they didn't specifically label this stuff as optional, I'd be bothered. But if they put out optional rules for more granular wilderness travel, or an optional Jester subclass, those kinds of things I'd be fine with. If they're good enough, I'd pay for them." I've never seen a push to make everything on DNDBeyond available in every game. I don't know many who allow all the setting book stuff, do you?
Hopefully 6e will flop so badly that the entire economy of China and France will collapse.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David. Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY. Focusing on Story and Rules are HARD. They are going to release a good looking tool that is hollow to its core. They'll have a year of uptick, and then unexplainably will lose users month over month.
Look at Diablo 3 and their store and what it did to Diablo 3 for player base. Expect loot boxes using skinner box mechanics to teach 13 year old's to gamble. We'll have parent groups coming out against D&D hard on this in a number of countries and DnD Beyond will get banned in a few EU states over loot boxes.
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?
They'll have different monetary tiers based on how much material you want probably. $4.99/mo. foot-in-the-door fee all the way up to $19.99/mo. for the powergamers who want it all. This'll take shopping for gear to another level with gamers dishing out real $$$ for masterwork and magic items. Compared to the trickle of money WoTC's making off selling books, selling a video game that drains gamers of their money is just great business.
You have gamers spending thousands a year (individually) on video game micro-transactions in order to get an edge. WoTC'd be stupid for missing out on this and the shift would revitalize the company.
A magazine subscription is a magazine subscription.
Microtransactions involve a host of tactics to prey on people's psychological weaknesses to optimize how much money the company can squeeze out of them. Well past the point of good businsess practices and into the realm of exploitation.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?
Because the shamdemic has trained many gamers that going outside and interacting with other gamers is scary and dangerous. Much safer to just sit in your room and play online.
And there could be patriarchy and White supremacy hiding at that hobby shop!!! How dare you not protect the LGBWTF and POCs!!!
Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 23, 2023, 01:38:32 AM
A magazine subscription is a magazine subscription.
Microtransactions involve a host of tactics to prey on people's psychological weaknesses to optimize how much money the company can squeeze out of them. Well past the point of good businsess practices and into the realm of exploitation.
Also, there's a difference between paying for an optional magazine subscription, and having to pay in perpetuity to gain full access to a game on top of paying for microtransactions. Add to that the fact that WotC has always failed at digital, and they're just begging for this whole thing to flop.
Quote from: Theory of Games on August 23, 2023, 01:03:03 AM
They'll have different monetary tiers based on how much material you want probably. $4.99/mo. foot-in-the-door fee all the way up to $19.99/mo. for the powergamers who want it all. This'll take shopping for gear to another level with gamers dishing out real $$$ for masterwork and magic items. Compared to the trickle of money WoTC's making off selling books, selling a video game that drains gamers of their money is just great business.
You have gamers spending thousands a year (individually) on video game micro-transactions in order to get an edge. WoTC'd be stupid for missing out on this and the shift would revitalize the company.
I agree WotC and Hasbro want to get in on that action. I question if they can. The sentiment against microtransactions is pretty harsh, and to make matters worse there are alternatives to using their money-extracting walled garden. They really needed to be rolling this out like 5-10 years ago -- now, I think they're too late to capitalize.
Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 23, 2023, 08:48:11 AM
Quote from: Theory of Games on August 23, 2023, 01:03:03 AM
They'll have different monetary tiers based on how much material you want probably. $4.99/mo. foot-in-the-door fee all the way up to $19.99/mo. for the powergamers who want it all. This'll take shopping for gear to another level with gamers dishing out real $$$ for masterwork and magic items. Compared to the trickle of money WoTC's making off selling books, selling a video game that drains gamers of their money is just great business.
You have gamers spending thousands a year (individually) on video game micro-transactions in order to get an edge. WoTC'd be stupid for missing out on this and the shift would revitalize the company.
I agree WotC and Hasbro want to get in on that action. I question if they can. The sentiment against microtransactions is pretty harsh, and to make matters worse there are alternatives to using their money-extracting walled garden. They really needed to be rolling this out like 5-10 years ago -- now, I think they're too late to capitalize.
Dude, its Hasbro, they are almost always behind the curve. They decided to use writers based on genital hole preference and genetics than hiring game designers and they have been seeing a marked decrease in sales. Meanwhile, Disney has been doing this for about 4 years and are now experienced a $2B loss this year (movies + hotel). Even when Disney does put out good content, people won't buy it because the Disney brand is now dog crap. And that dog crap covers up any attempt Disney now makes to recover sales. Hasbro is at risk if they don't wake up, they might never be able to recover their brands like Disney.
I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales. People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now. If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken, those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM
I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales. People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now. If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken, those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.
Agree 100%. Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.
Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:20:48 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM
I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales. People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now. If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken, those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.
Agree 100%. Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.
Technically the race marxists do have money, student loans while in college. So, for a 8 year window for them to get their bachelors in Antarctic studies they will have some spend. But a lot of their money is going to fentanyl and vegan water. So that will take away their spend.
What Hasbro should do is simply go to the conventions and just look at the people who go there, check their age, they tend to be their dungeon masters. Look at the paid subscriptions, they have their billing information. They can get 3rd party data to get the customers age and demographic information. The whales are going to skew older and when they look at their politics, its going to be moderate with a "wtf is their women have cocks" being the most common social media post. It would be akin to putting in Mohammed and the Hadiths into D&D, people don't want it the same way they don't want the race marxist bs being put into the game as well.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 11:34:31 AM
Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:20:48 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM
I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales. People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now. If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken, those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.
Agree 100%. Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.
Technically the race marxists do have money, student loans while in college. So, for a 8 year window for them to get their bachelors in Antarctic studies they will have some spend. But a lot of their money is going to fentanyl and vegan water. So that will take away their spend.
What Hasbro should do is simply go to the conventions and just look at the people who go there, check their age, they tend to be their dungeon masters. Look at the paid subscriptions, they have their billing information. They can get 3rd party data to get the customers age and demographic information. The whales are going to skew older and when they look at their politics, its going to be moderate with a "wtf is their women have cocks" being the most common social media post. It would be akin to putting in Mohammed and the Hadiths into D&D, people don't want it the same way they don't want the race marxist bs being put into the game as well.
If Hasbro had good market research skills they wouldn't be Hasbro. ;D
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David. Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY.
I worked in video games for nearly 20 years, I mean big studios like EA and Disney Interactive as an art lead and art director. Graphics are not easy, but they are the easiest to critique, while game design is hard to critique until the game is done. So artists rarely get away with screwing up their job, but game designers (and producers) get away with shoddy work up til the end.
I get your point though, story is one of the harder aspects of game design.
Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 23, 2023, 02:17:50 PM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David. Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY.
I worked in video games for nearly 20 years, I mean big studios like EA and Disney Interactive as an art lead and art director. Graphics are not easy, but they are the easiest to critique, while game design is hard to critique until the game is done. So artists rarely get away with screwing up their job, but game designers (and producers) get away with shoddy work up til the end.
I get your point though, story is one of the harder aspects of game design.
Story and mechanics are the most important part to most games, at EA it was graphics, graphics, graphics. I saw an Alpha for Dragon Age 2 and its mechanics and story was bad, but that's EA make as much sleazy money as possible. Frank Gibeau forced DA 2, blame that turkey. My boss was like "you loved DAO, what you think?", I stated "Bioware is no longer on my pre-buy list".
Quote from: David Johansen on August 23, 2023, 12:53:39 AM
Hopefully 6e will flop so badly that the entire economy of China and France will collapse.
It's basically impossible to be following what's been happening in the playtest and still call it 6e. They ditched all the new innovative stuff from the beginning of the playtest. It's now genuinely backwards compatible, and essentially like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything V2. Mostly just some additional subclasses and feats, only a couple of new things, but mostly the same old 5e.
They didn't even keep some of the most basic changes, like making every class gain their subclass stuff at the same levels. Even that reverted back to the 2014 version.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 23, 2023, 01:38:32 AM
A magazine subscription is a magazine subscription.
Microtransactions involve a host of tactics to prey on people's psychological weaknesses to optimize how much money the company can squeeze out of them. Well past the point of good businsess practices and into the realm of exploitation.
It's kinda looking like they're talking about a package deal with all those things like a magazine.
Quote from: VisionStorm on August 23, 2023, 04:35:23 AM
Also, there's a difference between paying for an optional magazine subscription, and having to pay in perpetuity to gain full access to a game on top of paying for microtransactions.
Right, and they do not seem to be talking about that later type. They seem to be talking about a bunch of non-essential optional additional content like you'd find in a magazine. It does not seem to be the access to the game itself. But we shall see.
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
To me, a lot of this looks like optional content like you'd find in Dragon and Dungeon magazine years ago, with some added digital aspects. TSR and later WOTC would release what can fairly be described as a subclass (or prestige class in 3e or kits in 2e or alternative classes in 1e, depending on the edition) to Dragon Magazine. Those were microtransactions where you bought the magazine to gain access to the subclass for a few bucks. It wasn't digital, but it was a microtransaction to access optional rules.
So your idea of microtransactions is meaningless if buying a magazine = microtransaction!
The stuff in Dragon and Dungeon was never official. Not even Polyhedron was. The magazines acted more as playtest platforms.
Quote from: Mistwell on August 24, 2023, 01:47:49 AM
Quote from: David Johansen on August 23, 2023, 12:53:39 AM
Hopefully 6e will flop so badly that the entire economy of China and France will collapse.
It's basically impossible to be following what's been happening in the playtest and still call it 6e. They ditched all the new innovative stuff from the beginning of the playtest. It's now genuinely backwards compatible, and essentially like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything V2. Mostly just some additional subclasses and feats, only a couple of new things, but mostly the same old 5e.
They didn't even keep some of the most basic changes, like making every class gain their subclass stuff at the same levels. Even that reverted back to the 2014 version.
They probably had all these pie in the sky ideas but no time allowed to actually make them work so they were scrapped because the overlords demand rollouts on THEIR timetables. It is the same reason late TSR put out so much crapola. They had already promised X number of products to the book sellers by a specific date then scrambled to find someone to write them who could meet the deadline.
Quote from: Omega on August 24, 2023, 03:55:29 AM
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
To me, a lot of this looks like optional content like you'd find in Dragon and Dungeon magazine years ago, with some added digital aspects. TSR and later WOTC would release what can fairly be described as a subclass (or prestige class in 3e or kits in 2e or alternative classes in 1e, depending on the edition) to Dragon Magazine. Those were microtransactions where you bought the magazine to gain access to the subclass for a few bucks. It wasn't digital, but it was a microtransaction to access optional rules.
So your idea of microtransactions is meaningless if buying a magazine = microtransaction!
The stuff in Dragon and Dungeon was never official. Not even Polyhedron was. The magazines acted more as playtest platforms.
Total side-note.
99.9% correct. But OCCASIONALLY... WotC would ask Paizo to create content that would be "official" (not that it meant much) that WotC itself never intended to publish. For example they asked Paizo to do features for official 3e content on its various settings - Greyhawk, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, Darksun, Ravenloft among others. They were not full blown setting writeups or anything, but were supposed to be official 3e content for those settings by request from WotC.
I was asked to do Al-Qadim (though I wanted to do Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim was my second option, but they gave it to James Wyatt (since he did the 3e OA book... which I thought sucked).
:) Thanks for sharing, Mistwell. It would be nice that WotC's aspirations stay within your expectation here. But I just have less faith in that from past experience, especially from its other big game MtG. But let's hope you are right.
I personally do miss Dragon & Dungeon magazine. However it might be me missing magazines in general. ;D I did get Dragon+ magazine during it's initial re-release during 5e's 2014 release. It was... disappointing. More advertising brochure than magazine in my opinion. I eventually unsubscribed.
Similarly I'll probably not follow into this D&D "6e" edition. It doesn't offer enough of what I am looking for so far. But time will tell. 8)
PS: Cool anecdote, tenbones!
Quote from: tenbones on August 24, 2023, 10:35:41 AM
Quote from: Omega on August 24, 2023, 03:55:29 AM
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
To me, a lot of this looks like optional content like you'd find in Dragon and Dungeon magazine years ago, with some added digital aspects. TSR and later WOTC would release what can fairly be described as a subclass (or prestige class in 3e or kits in 2e or alternative classes in 1e, depending on the edition) to Dragon Magazine. Those were microtransactions where you bought the magazine to gain access to the subclass for a few bucks. It wasn't digital, but it was a microtransaction to access optional rules.
So your idea of microtransactions is meaningless if buying a magazine = microtransaction!
The stuff in Dragon and Dungeon was never official. Not even Polyhedron was. The magazines acted more as playtest platforms.
Total side-note.
99.9% correct. But OCCASIONALLY... WotC would ask Paizo to create content that would be "official" (not that it meant much) that WotC itself never intended to publish. For example they asked Paizo to do features for official 3e content on its various settings - Greyhawk, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, Darksun, Ravenloft among others. They were not full blown setting writeups or anything, but were supposed to be official 3e content for those settings by request from WotC.
I was asked to do Al-Qadim (though I wanted to do Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim was my second option, but they gave it to James Wyatt (since he did the 3e OA book... which I thought sucked).
The 3e OA book -- wasn't that the one where they tried to cram the L5R setting into D&D?
I was like... but why?
Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:37:52 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 11:34:31 AM
Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:20:48 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM
I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales. People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now. If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken, those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.
Agree 100%. Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.
Technically the race marxists do have money, student loans while in college. So, for a 8 year window for them to get their bachelors in Antarctic studies they will have some spend. But a lot of their money is going to fentanyl and vegan water. So that will take away their spend.
What Hasbro should do is simply go to the conventions and just look at the people who go there, check their age, they tend to be their dungeon masters. Look at the paid subscriptions, they have their billing information. They can get 3rd party data to get the customers age and demographic information. The whales are going to skew older and when they look at their politics, its going to be moderate with a "wtf is their women have cocks" being the most common social media post. It would be akin to putting in Mohammed and the Hadiths into D&D, people don't want it the same way they don't want the race marxist bs being put into the game as well.
If Hasbro had good market research skills they wouldn't be Hasbro. ;D
But. They were smart enough to buy WoTC who has D&D and continue to dominate the ttrpg hobby with that game. Worked it into popular shows like
Stranger Things and
Big Bang. Just made a movie. Name the OSR hack that comes anywhere close to 5e's success.
I'll wait.
A lot of you are in the same "I hate my parents" space as SJWs, except your inserted parent is WoTC. But you're playing games based on an IP owned by ... your parents ;D
Who's fooling who here?
Quote from: Theory of Games on August 24, 2023, 04:11:45 PM
Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:37:52 AM
If Hasbro had good market research skills they wouldn't be Hasbro. ;D
But. They were smart enough to buy WoTC who has D&D and continue to dominate the ttrpg hobby with that game. Worked it into popular shows like Stranger Things and Big Bang. Just made a movie. Name the OSR hack that comes anywhere close to 5e's success.
Fail for straw man. Your response is NOT an argument FOR market research skills. Once you have reinserted your logic circuitry, get back to me.
The big thing here will be if a "GM Mode" comes out for Baldur's Gate 3.... Larian themselves has said they have no plan to do this (Despite having done it for their previous games, Divinity Sins) and I would hazard to bet Hasbro had something in there for not allowing them to build what would functionally be... a BETTER VTT than the one Wizard's themselves is developing..
But...
If the modding community comes together and creates a GM mode for Baldur's Gate 3.... It will easily eat Hasbro's Lunch, and all those dreams of micro-transactions will go up in flames from the better, virtual tabletop that would be Baldur's Gate 3.
They would have had to have written that proviso back around 2016, well before virtual tabletops took off. WotC has not demonstrated that level of foresight.
Quote from: Corolinth on August 24, 2023, 05:48:43 PM
They would have had to have written that proviso back around 2016, well before virtual tabletops took off. WotC has not demonstrated that level of foresight.
Generally speaking, given Larian's track record of including a GM mode in every one of their previous games, but *NOT* Baldur's gate 3... and their announcement they have no plans on making one... I would bet at some point came to alter the provisions against making one, so they didn't end up as competition. Because it's very suspect, especially when Larian even said, they wish they *HAD* made a GM mode because it would have meant making the game easier for them too.
Quote from: Orphan81 on August 24, 2023, 04:45:04 PM
The big thing here will be if a "GM Mode" comes out for Baldur's Gate 3.... Larian themselves has said they have no plan to do this (Despite having done it for their previous games, Divinity Sins) and I would hazard to bet Hasbro had something in there for not allowing them to build what would functionally be... a BETTER VTT than the one Wizard's themselves is developing..
But...
If the modding community comes together and creates a GM mode for Baldur's Gate 3.... It will easily eat Hasbro's Lunch, and all those dreams of micro-transactions will go up in flames from the better, virtual tabletop that would be Baldur's Gate 3.
In my opinion:Even if Larian does A GM mode it will be for a niche audience compared to Wotzi's OneVTT.
The One VTT is a one-stop shop linked to D&D beyond that will have all future AP's and adventure modules plug-and-play
with all the little 'optional' cosmetic transactions for PC's ready to go...
The overwhelming majority of GM's are just too damn lazy to roll their own on some BG3 "GM mode", and will go with the option that gets them playing the new hotness adventure path from Wotzi with the least resistance.
Quote from: Jaeger on August 24, 2023, 08:19:03 PM
Quote from: Orphan81 on August 24, 2023, 04:45:04 PM
The big thing here will be if a "GM Mode" comes out for Baldur's Gate 3.... Larian themselves has said they have no plan to do this (Despite having done it for their previous games, Divinity Sins) and I would hazard to bet Hasbro had something in there for not allowing them to build what would functionally be... a BETTER VTT than the one Wizard's themselves is developing..
But...
If the modding community comes together and creates a GM mode for Baldur's Gate 3.... It will easily eat Hasbro's Lunch, and all those dreams of micro-transactions will go up in flames from the better, virtual tabletop that would be Baldur's Gate 3.
In my opinion:
Even if Larian does A GM mode it will be for a niche audience compared to Wotzi's OneVTT.
The One VTT is a one-stop shop linked to D&D beyond that will have all future AP's and adventure modules plug-and-play
with all the little 'optional' cosmetic transactions for PC's ready to go...
The overwhelming majority of GM's are just too damn lazy to roll their own on some BG3 "GM mode", and will go with the option that gets them playing the new hotness adventure path from Wotzi with the least resistance.
It's a win-win-win IMNSHO.
WotZi makes a fuckton of money
The 5erites go to play that and leave TTRPGs the fuck alone
Nature abhorres a vacum so it will be filled by someone or several someones.
Quote from: Omega on August 24, 2023, 03:55:29 AM
Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
To me, a lot of this looks like optional content like you'd find in Dragon and Dungeon magazine years ago, with some added digital aspects. TSR and later WOTC would release what can fairly be described as a subclass (or prestige class in 3e or kits in 2e or alternative classes in 1e, depending on the edition) to Dragon Magazine. Those were microtransactions where you bought the magazine to gain access to the subclass for a few bucks. It wasn't digital, but it was a microtransaction to access optional rules.
So your idea of microtransactions is meaningless if buying a magazine = microtransaction!
The stuff in Dragon and Dungeon was never official. Not even Polyhedron was. The magazines acted more as playtest platforms.
I disagree it was all playtest material. Plenty was "optional additional" type stuff of the same nature as this stuff. At the end there Paizo was putting out complete official adventure paths. But as for playtest material, they literally have that as one of the line items for this.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on August 24, 2023, 07:32:22 AM
Quote from: Mistwell on August 24, 2023, 01:47:49 AM
Quote from: David Johansen on August 23, 2023, 12:53:39 AM
Hopefully 6e will flop so badly that the entire economy of China and France will collapse.
It's basically impossible to be following what's been happening in the playtest and still call it 6e. They ditched all the new innovative stuff from the beginning of the playtest. It's now genuinely backwards compatible, and essentially like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything V2. Mostly just some additional subclasses and feats, only a couple of new things, but mostly the same old 5e.
They didn't even keep some of the most basic changes, like making every class gain their subclass stuff at the same levels. Even that reverted back to the 2014 version.
They probably had all these pie in the sky ideas but no time allowed to actually make them work so they were scrapped because the overlords demand rollouts on THEIR timetables. It is the same reason late TSR put out so much crapola. They had already promised X number of products to the book sellers by a specific date then scrambled to find someone to write them who could meet the deadline.
I mean a year long playtest isn't that short. And they say why they scrapped each one - it didn't score 70% or more approval, even after two tries (or more) with tweaks based on feedback. People...just didn't want it changed that much it seems.
Quote from: tenbones on August 24, 2023, 10:35:41 AM
Total side-note.
99.9% correct. But OCCASIONALLY... WotC would ask Paizo to create content that would be "official" (not that it meant much) that WotC itself never intended to publish. For example they asked Paizo to do features for official 3e content on its various settings - Greyhawk, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, Darksun, Ravenloft among others. They were not full blown setting writeups or anything, but were supposed to be official 3e content for those settings by request from WotC.
But even those were never really official. RPGA never recognized them or even the stuff in Polyhedron unless it got vetted in some module or official update.
Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 24, 2023, 08:37:07 PM
Nature abhorres a vacum so it will be filled by someone or several someones.
This is the best possible side effect.
Quote from: Omega on August 25, 2023, 05:43:18 AM
Quote from: tenbones on August 24, 2023, 10:35:41 AM
Total side-note.
99.9% correct. But OCCASIONALLY... WotC would ask Paizo to create content that would be "official" (not that it meant much) that WotC itself never intended to publish. For example they asked Paizo to do features for official 3e content on its various settings - Greyhawk, Kara-Tur, Al-Qadim, Darksun, Ravenloft among others. They were not full blown setting writeups or anything, but were supposed to be official 3e content for those settings by request from WotC.
But even those were never really official. RPGA never recognized them or even the stuff in Polyhedron unless it got vetted in some module or official update.
RPGA is the "official" indicator? Because if that's the case, much of what WOTC has published isn't "official" as it's often not allowed in Adventurer's League. I don't think that's what makes things "official." Having to work with complete strangers on a one-shot basis with a reward system isn't the same as the game itself.