D&D Microtransactions

tenbones · 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).

Opaopajr · August 24, 2023, 10:44:54 AM

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.

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.

PS: Cool anecdote, tenbones!

Ghostmaker · August 24, 2023, 02:02:23 PM

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?

Theory of Games · August 24, 2023, 04:11:45 PM

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.

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

Who's fooling who here?

Scooter · August 24, 2023, 04:15:52 PM

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.
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.

Orphan81 · 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.

Corolinth · 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.

Orphan81 · August 24, 2023, 07:10:34 PM

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.

Jaeger · 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.

GeekyBugle · August 24, 2023, 08:37:07 PM

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.

Mistwell · August 25, 2023, 12:04:15 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.

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.

Mistwell · August 25, 2023, 12:06:16 AM

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.

Omega · 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.

Scooter · August 25, 2023, 09:56:22 AM

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.

Mistwell · August 25, 2023, 10:33:08 AM

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.