The #dnd sales this quarter were awful, but #WotC covered it up by throwing in their #BG3 royalties.
Meanwhile, they continue to guarantee that D&D will do worse, by secretly rewriting core books for wokeness.
#ttrpg

They're not the only ones. Paradox has been trying to turn Bloodlines into a franchise and... failing. They've been epically failing in every single video game they've shat out so far.

D&D inspired games are a dime a dozen and guaranteed to make money regardless of quality. Paradox hasn't had a single success and all their games are insufferably woke.

I'd saw Greyhawk Grognard's video about this and I have to agree that even if you remove the political aspect of rewriting books, it's an egregious move against free thought. That and it undermines the whole law vs. chaos dynamic, and the desire to explore the unknown.

Just another reason to buy older, physical books. Reprints should be safe for now, but when they figure out how to edit those it'll be a sad day. That and it requires giving WOTC money.

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on November 22, 2023, 02:11:05 PM
I'd saw Greyhawk Grognard's video about this and I have to agree that even if you remove the political aspect of rewriting books, it's an egregious move against free thought. That and it undermines the whole law vs. chaos dynamic, and the desire to explore the unknown.

Just another reason to buy older, physical books. Reprints should be safe for now, but when they figure out how to edit those it'll be a sad day. That and it requires giving WOTC money.

They KNOW how to edit the reprints, it's not that hard, but it needs people doing the editing and layout, which means money, they don't do it not for lack of knowledge but because it would cost them money.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on November 22, 2023, 02:16:38 PM

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on November 22, 2023, 02:11:05 PM
I'd saw Greyhawk Grognard's video about this and I have to agree that even if you remove the political aspect of rewriting books, it's an egregious move against free thought. That and it undermines the whole law vs. chaos dynamic, and the desire to explore the unknown.

Just another reason to buy older, physical books. Reprints should be safe for now, but when they figure out how to edit those it'll be a sad day. That and it requires giving WOTC money.

They KNOW how to edit the reprints, it's not that hard, but it needs people doing the editing and layout, which means money, they don't do it not for lack of knowledge but because it would cost them money.

That's kinda nuts then, I mean you could buy a POD copy of A1-A4 and get something entirely different from the original. Sad stuff to think about.

The edits to the 2014 books really bothers me. If they want to update language in a new edition, even if I think the changes aren't sound, at least that is honest. But it feels very dishonest to alter language in books released in 2014, because it gives a false impression of what was released at the time and it feels like they are editing history. I get that there are second, third, fourth printings, and sometimes that means removing typos, fixing major errors. I generally don't expect substantive changes to the text without some kind of note about it.

Also looking at the terms they are changing, most of it really looks like they are being far too overly cautious about causing offense. Saying something like 'they were dark times' is a normal expression. Barbarian Horde means something concrete and evocative, whereas invading horde is more neutral (there are certainly going to be times to use the latter, but it takes something useful off the table to swap out barbarian for invading). Madness, dim-wittedness, and slavery are all things that exist and existed in the world, and shaven those out feels like it make the game much more vanilla (also changing slavery to servants, which appears to be what they did, is a pretty odd choice). The switch from dim-witted to incurious is particularly irritating. A big lumbering, dim-witted ogre, makes sense. What exactly is an incurious ogre going to play like? I can see it being a useful characterization for certain NPCs, but it is a strange replacement for dim-witted and it sounds painfully diplomatic----like they are trying to say the same thing but using much more oblique language: if someone called me 'incurious' I would still take umbrage I am sure.

It isn't surprising that executives are always spinning things to make it sound like they have better profits than they really do. 

I generally agree with your analysis.

But don't underestimate the brand loyalists, including those here, that will still buy it just because they can't help themselves. I will happily watch the ship sink in either case.

Quote from: tenbones on November 23, 2023, 01:11:27 PM
I generally agree with your analysis.

But don't underestimate the brand loyalists, including those here, that will still buy it just because they can't help themselves. I will happily watch the ship sink in either case.

Neither do I. I've even been told to buy bad products anyway to show support, as if that will somehow convince corpos to correct their bad behavior. I keep trying to tell people to make their own stuff a la Rippaverse, but I don't see results.

Quote from: tenbones on November 23, 2023, 01:11:27 PM
I generally agree with your analysis.

But don't underestimate the brand loyalists, including those here, that will still buy it just because they can't help themselves. I will happily watch the ship sink in either case.

Same. WotC stopped trying to breed cultists and has switched to trying to breed mindless cattle.

All of this terrible product certainly isn't helping WOTC or Hasbro but when you compound all the garbage they are selling with the horrible inflation then sales drop off even more. When groceries and other life neccessities are costing 100% or more than they did just a couple years ago, the amount of disposable cash to buy rpg material drops right off. Then, with the meager amount left to spend, WOTC wants to sell books about lesbian dryads working as baristas and crap like that. We may see yet another contraction in stock price for Q4, but maybe Christmas sales of BG 3 might keep them afloat until spring. Not like BG3 is any great piece of work with its bestiality and bullshit.