Layoffs at WotC 286
Abies writes "During last year or so, quite a lot of people were fired from WotC - current owners of the D&D line. A few days ago, _most_ of big names out there had to quit - including Skip Williams and Jeff Grubb. Official WotC press info, Enworld news about that and a Monte Cook thread contain some more detailed info.
Do you think it will spell an end to D&D ? After something which seemed to be a ressurection of old-time RPG, Hasbro seems to kill the biggest RPG company out there. Will OGL and the D20 license be enough to preserve the genre ?"
It's all in your head (Score:5, Insightful)
Online Muds: Free and Non-commercial (Score:3, Insightful)
Stale future (Score:2, Insightful)
WotC killed itself (Score:1, Insightful)
Whether it be for D&D, Magic: The Gather, or one of their other drugs.. er games.
They can Coast a long for quite a while... (Score:3, Insightful)
Its just business. Short-sited myopic business maybe, but not surprising at all. Hasbro is still in business while the much of the competition isnt. The employees can always invent a new game, become hugely popular, and sell out to Hasbro again.
WotC = Soul Sucking Coperation. (Score:2, Insightful)
Preserve the genre? Is my old copy of Chainmail. . (Score:5, Insightful)
An RPG is nothing but a set of rules, a framework, around which a campaign is built. The rules have already been published. If people wish to play D&D they will continue to play D&D no matter what the hell happens at or to WotC.
Hey, remember the days when a single human being could carry all the rules to D&D without the aid of a forklift? In his *pocket?* Go get a copy of those rules somewhere, Xerox them if you have to, it'll just make them look more authentic anyway, and then find come creative type with a good *imagination* to run the show. All the players need are some pencils and graph paper.
Does the genre need to be preserved? Only if we've sunk so low in our society that college kids these days can't have fun sitting around the commons and * making cool shit up!*
KFG
WotC could lay off because the project is done. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing d20 still needs is a good set of software tools for GM's who like to run the game from their laptops, and due to the open nature of d20, I'm sure a lot of amitious hackers are going to fill that void anyway.
As long as WotC offered these guys a nice, fat severence package as a way of saying "thanks" for their efforts, I have no problem with seeing them cut loose.
Fresh blood is important (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, some people don't care. If they can play with their old time friends, it's ok. But from my experience (not much, I do NOT have original chainmail on my shelf - I play RPGs for only 15 years), fresh blood is very refreshing experience (not Vampire pun intended
Now, it is not so grim - there will be other RPGs out there. If somebody would be a good D&D DM, he will also probably make good DM in other games. But certain genre of RPG - high heroic, strict rules for even very powerful characters, etc, is for me tightly tied to D&D. Even if I sometimes prefer 'deeper' sessions, I and my friends really enjoy being able to developer a HERO from 1st level up to ultimate dragon-slaying king. And I'm afraid, that with D&D demise (which is not yet sure of course), this type of RPG would die.
How is Magic On-line doing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Magic is a fun challenging game... if you can afford to spend at least $300-$600 a year on it or can bargain like a madman. People stop playing because they got tired of the upgrade treadmill and seeing their old cards more or less become useless.
So, for the on-line version, what do they do? They make an even worse version of that flaw! You have to pay full retail for virtual cards. I never paid that much even with the real ones. I would buy by the box at a substantial discount. That's how I stayed in it for so long. This just ensures people burn out sooner.
I think if they had merely charged $10/month for access to all the cards, they would've done insanely well. Over a year, it probably adds up to about the same as the booster approach for many people, but that whole year I would've been able to build any deck I wanted.
As it is, I'm staying the fuck away from it. It's a pity. I really liked the first computer version of Magic the Gathering.
Who cares if D&D dies? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some nice odds and ends that came out of TSR - I personally thought that Ravenloft, Darksun and Planescape were interesting attempts to breath new life into the increasingly stagnant fantasy genre, but look at how bland the rest of the backgrounds are: Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Birthright - footnotes to Tolkien at best., they are nothing more than cashcows. The D&D system just plain sucked, still does, and if you just want to do hack an' slash then there are plenty of multiplayer computer games such as Diablo II, Everquest, and even the biosphere offerings will more than fill your needs and are probably much more fun. Or why not just do wargaming instead - Games Workhop and other cater to this market just fine?
The reason that roleplaying keeps me interested theses days is the background, complex plots, characters and interesting players/GMs - the sort of interactivity that computers games will not yet achieve for some time to come. Look at the two biggest RPG companies aside from WotC: Whitewolf and Steve Jackson Games:
Love or hate it (which I do in equal amounts) WW has done much more to actually build interesting and innovative fictional environments for roleplaying with the World of Darkness and Trinty Universe lines than TSR/WotC has ever managed with various flavours of D&D. They sell not because the system, but because of the content and quality of the background material.
Likewise, GURPS is popular not because of the system, (although it is a much better attempt at a universal system than D&D3 will ever be) but because of the hugh range of excellently written background books -regardless of what system you like to use, even if you hate the system, many of the books are still highly entertaining, and useful.
The opensource game license is an interesting idea, but I believe ultimately flawed. They are working from the premise that getting into RPGs is hard because there are so many systems and they are so different to learn - their solution is that we all use the D&D system and so don't have to learn new systems for different genres of play and then everyone can then write their games for the largest possible market (D&D system). The problem with this is that one system doesn't suit all types of games, all types of genre and all types of groups!
If you are into interesting system mechanics then look at Phage Press' Amber Diceless Roleplaying games (set in Zelazn'y Chronicles of Amber Universe), or Jonathan Tweet's Everway RPG, based on using vision and fate card. Both are truely unique and interesting games because the systems facilitates storytelling. The first time that we played Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu was a milestone for our gaming group: WHAT WE CAN'T JUST KILL THE ENEMY? We had to actually think about innovative ways to defeat the enemy while avoiding combat!
Our group LIKES there to be different flavours of rules for different types of games we play - hell most of the games we play these days barely require any rules: the ROLEplaying of characters is what is important not the ROLLplaying of dice! Do the roleplaying community a big favour and let D&D die!
Re:Preserve the genre? Is my old copy of Chainmail (Score:2, Insightful)
"Elbereth Habeas Corpus!", cried the Armani-clad knight as he swung his +3 Firebrand (tm, registered, patent pending, copyright) down upon the arms of the bespectacled Mage, which at that moment were holding an open Holy Tome over one of the Demonic alters - a shaft of light and a macabre hum emanating from it's heart. A single word, "Xerox", emblazoned on the front...
There's a lot of insinuation about WoTC executive greed/money-grubbing going on - which may be the case, but it is also a very hard time for any business to stay afloat. Still, with the relative success of the d20 system, I expected WoTC to be in the black for some time (although I've heard it said that they only make money on the sales of Player's Handbooks - don't quite follow why.)
Monte Cook's rant [montecook.com] has some fine points, but no specific names or facts about WoTC. It does seem that somebody has decided to squeeze the venerable D&D turnip, or perhaps killing the goose is a better analogy - ok, they're doing something they shouldn't be with farmyard items - let's leave it at that. Over the past 20 years (where are them wooden teeth, dad-gum-it!) I've had the pleasure of playing the following gaming systems:
- AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition (missed out on Chainmail!)
- Gamma World
- Traveler
- Top Secret
- Paranoia
- Gangsters
- Chill
- Arms Law/Claw Law/Spell Law
- Empire of the Petal Throne
- GURPS
- AD&D 3rd Edition
- Some others, but my Alzheimer's is acting up again...
Some of these games/rule systems were remarkably complete (sometime to a fault) - others were extremely simple. Still, the success of a given game never depended on just the rule system - it required a creative, fair, and well-paced DM (or what have you) to make it all work.So, what's my point? (Hey, this is /., do I need one?) Forget the gaming system. Get a good group of creative people together, crank out your own house-brew, and battle on.
If you see an Orc in the road, kill it.